Cassini Spots Geysers On Saturn's Moon Enceladus

An anonymous reader writes "Huge geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus may be fed by a salty sea below its surface, boosting the odds of extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System."

Comments

its all about the water

[MeatBag PussRocket]

My understanding is that the major thing of interest is that there is _salt water_ on this moon. salt usually comes from rocks and to get it into water pretty much requires _liquid_ water, therefore the possibility of a life sustaining habitat. the geysers indicate is its possible that it has a liquid core, though i could be mistaken on that part.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[MeatBag PussRocket]

that seems like a pretty dumb idea. if there is any life outside our earth, sending life forms into its habitat could be incredibly destructive. the idea isn't to kill everything we see (though humans are good at that, i'll admit) its to learn about what might be out there.

Which System?

[theCoder]

...the odds of extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System.

There is only one Solar System in the entire galaxy. This is because the name the star that Earth orbits is "Sol", hence the Solal System. There are other stellar systems (I think that's the right phrase) out there, but only one Solar System.

Re:Which System?

[SomeJoel]

hence the Solal System.

If you're going to try to be a pedantic know-it-all, you really should proofread your own posts.

Re:Which System?

[MyLongNickName]

NASA disagrees: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/spitzer/signs/sign_glossary.shtml#S

"solar system
        A system of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, dust, gas, and any other objects that orbit a star, tied to it by the star's gravitational force. "

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[WillDraven]

In my opinion giving life in general a chance to continue should something happen to the Earth is a worthy enough cause. I've often dreamt of designing autonomous starships that investigate stellar systems. If there is no life there they would seed the planets with hardy bacteria, mine some material to replicate itself, and sends a copy or two of itself on to the next star systems while it parks in orbit or on a moon somewhere to wait and greet anything intelligent that might evolve and tell them where they came from.

Re:Implications

[FiloEleven]

That's easy: the fundamentalist religious groups will do their damnedest to ignore it or try to spin it away, the fundamentalist secular groups will do their damnedest to claim that the findings refute all religion, and everyone else will assimilate the information and get on with their lives.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[Taint Bearer]

I am a biologist. Any bacteria which had that much DNA would pretty much use most of it for fuel, as it would be much to costly to replicate when the cell divides. Bacteria are able to take on DNA from the external environment so a better idea would be to seed the planet with vesicles filled with random sections of DNA taken from other bacteria that utilise other energy sources. This may assist in speeding up evolution, IF the genes are stable enough to last long enough for them to be useful. However, the original researchers will be long dead by then, so it is a very long pilot study.