Cassini Could Find Signs of Life on Enceladus

New Scientist reviews the possibility that the Cassini probe might be repurposed to look for signs of life on Saturn's enigmatic moon Enceladus. "[Enceladus' water vapor] plume's origin is still being debated, but some models suggest the moon holds an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. This ocean could be a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. ... Though the probe was never designed to look for life, it could do so by studying organic chemicals such as methane in the plume, the team says."

Comments

Re:Methane?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Because in space, no one can hear you fart.

These are Saturnian farts. Much stronger than your average SBD.

Re:Just imagine what could be there

[CRCulver]

At -175C on the outer rings, its got to be even colder on the surface. If at all there is water on the surface, its frozen solid for gazillion years.

Unless there is still geological activity beneath the surface, as there possibly is on several moons.

Re:Just imagine what could be there

[dreamchaser]

Precursors? They've already determined that complete amino acids can be found on carbonaceous asteroids. It's actually *easy* to make amino acids; the mystery is how amino and nucleic acids came together to form what we call life. My guess is given the right environment (liquid water, ingredients, and a source of energy) and enough time 'life' forms under a variety of other variables.

Misleading Summary

[CheshireCatCO]

I think that the summary (and to a lesser extent, the story) only accurate if you don't think that Cassini is already looking for signs of life on Enceladus. In fact, Enceladus has become (with Titan) one of the most important mission objectives for Cassini. As the story points out, the kind of data that would help address the possibility of life has already been collected (and will no doubt continue to be collected).

In other words, this isn't repurposing, it's a story about what's already being done.

Re:Misleading Summary

[CheshireCatCO]

It depends on how long the warmth lasts. Life on Earth arose fairly quickly after things got habitable. (A few hundred million years is, I believe, now the best figure.) So it's possible for Enceladus to develop life quickly, too, if conditions were suitable.

Also, you're forgetting the issue of accessibility. Europa's liquids are under at least a kilometer of ice, perhaps as much as ten kilometers. Enceladus's liquids are not only probably near the surface (tens to hundreds of meters), they're spewing into space so that no drilling is even required to reach them.

Also-also: the models I've been seeing lately seem to suggest that the heat here may be related to primordial heating. In that case, Enceladus may have been warm for a very long time, longer than Europa even. (The latter requires Ganymede and Io's joint resonance with it to keep its eccentricity high enough to cause the tidal flexing that produces heat. That resonance was likely not primordial, although I've seen suggestions that it could have been.)

Re:Just imagine what could be there

[Fluffeh]

Not to totally go in the face of your post, but to counter your "massive improbability" comment. Yes, it's totally a massive improbability that life starts easily. However, what life has on it's side is TIME. Enceladus has been happily circling it's planet for millions of years. Sure, it's improbably that life was created there in the first minute. It's also improbably that just the right mix of ingredients was there the next minute - but the odds get better and better with every following minute that the right bunch of ingredients came along and life popped into existence from the precursors that were in the water. Given millions and millions of years, I would say that the chances don't look like a massive improbability, but more along the lines of a massive probability that at some point the right mix of things came together and made life of some sort. I would go so far as to say that I think it would be a massive improbability that the universe isn't simply teeming with life of all sorts.

Re:Laughed at in college

[grahamd0]

No, because mainstream scientists believe that his speculation has enough merit that they're willing to commit time and money to find out if it's correct.

That is, I took his post to mean that he was vindicated in the sense that he was making a valid line of inquiry, rather than making up crackpot theories that deserve to be modded down by a teacher.