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Evidence for Life on a Saturn Moon

The Secrets of Enceladus

By Corey grovesPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Enceladus

The search for intelligent life outside of our pale blue dot is a bold one indeed and has been going on for quite some time. Going back as far as we can into human history and even prehistory, people have looked to the stars in search of answers. Where does this all come from? How and why is the existence of our universe as we know it possible? Possibly one of the most eerie questions in this field of thought: are we alone?

The pace of the search to answer that question has picked up significantly in recent years, especially after the founding of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in 1984. Our ability to send shuttles, rovers, probes, and other useful pieces of tech into space has made it possible to go beyond simply looking to the stars and progress to the next step of physically analyzing what's in our solar system. Although we have yet to step foot on anything farther away than our own moon, those brilliantly engineered crafts are helping to pave the way.

One of the aforementioned crafts is Cassini-Huygens, more commonly referred to as just Cassini. It was launched in October of 1997 and entered the orbit of Saturn in July of 2004 where it continued to orbit and collect data until it crashed into the gas giant in September of 2017. While the Cassini craft is no longer around to send back data, researchers are still analyzing the vast amounts it was able to capture during its lifespan.

New research on that data has revealed that there are large, organic molecules spouting from cracks in the icy surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn's. To our knowledge, this makes Enceladus the only other place in our solar system (so far) other than Earth which meets the necessary requirements for life as we know it. That includes carbon, water, and some sort of atmosphere to sustain life. Underneath the thick layer of ice encasing the moon lies a warm and mysterious ocean which expels large amounts of icy vapor (think hydrothermal vents in the ocean). The large organic molecules collected by Cassini back in 2015 came from some of such vapor plumes. After a close analysis of those molecules, it's been determined that they hold all of the telltale characteristics of carbon-rich matter including a molecular mass of over 200 atomic units, which classifies them as macromolecules.

In addition to that, they boast a complex structure of carbon rings and chains which can only be made through complex chemical processes. If that isn't enough, there were also traces of molecular hydrogen found from the same vapor. Going back to the hydrothermal vents that have allowed for life to emerge on Earth, hydrogen is an essential component along with carbon and water to breed life. What we don't yet know is what the exact source of the macromolecules is and whether it itself is organic in nature or whether more complex molecules lie under the surface of Enceladus.

For now it is left in part to speculation and to a more scrupulous investigation of the evidence gathered throughout the years. With any luck we will one day be able to physically reach the moons of Saturn and the vast expanses of our solar system or even farther, but for now it is exciting to note that there is another Earth-like body orbiting around the sun. The search for life beyond our pale blue dot is not an easy one but it is certainly worth the time for curiosity's sake if nothing else. For a more in-depth understanding, take a look at the study itself which was published on June 27 in Nature.

astronomy
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