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

Why not create our own ET life?

[FreakinSyco]

We know what these planets consist of. We know of some pretty crazy bacteria here on earth. Why not shoot a rocket full of random bacteria that can survive our most extreme conditions to places like these?

If I recall correctly NASA has always been super careful about bacteria on space vehicles. Why don't we just infect everything and kick start this whole ET thing ourselves.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[geekoid]

I like it.

Besides, the more I learn about the human body, the more convinced our real purpose is to move bacteria around, so this is a logic extension of out purpose.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[Merls the Sneaky]

Of course once we have verified it is devoid of life it's actually a good idea.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[gnick]

To what end? The same thing has occurred to me, but I can't fathom a useful end-product. If we want to study the behavior of exotic bacteria/whatever, we can replicate the conditions here on Earth much more cheaply than rocketing them off into space (not to mention they'd be much easier to watch/study). And if you've got some fantasy of them evolving into super-fish or whatever, you'd better be REALLY patient. (And, again, even if you're hoping for macro-evolution, we could replicate the environment more easily than visiting it.) If it's dead, I see no benefit of adding life.

My vote - It's much more interesting to just keep it pristine and see what's there (even if it's nothing.) And, if there is life, it would be far more interesting to see something (however primitive) that had a fresh start rather than something that started here.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[smaddox]

Seeding, mining, and replicating maybe, but waiting around for billions of years for intelligent life to evolve? Unlikely.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[Taint Bearer]

one data point (Earth) isn't a very good sample. If it started in a similar fashion, we learn more about Earth, and if it started in a different way, we get a ton of new information we likely would never come across on Earth.

Exactly right. If we can find life on a moon around a gas giant that is not in the "Goldilocks Zone" then this vastly increases the chances of life existing elsewhere in the universe. Also, assuming for a moment that life DOES exist in places other than earth, if the life found on Enceladus it is from a different biological origin to us, then this would increase the chances of us being able to study other life forms that we discover, as earth-based biology is also only a single data point.

Re:Why not create our own ET life?

[gyrogeerloose]

the more I learn about the human body, the more convinced our real purpose is to move bacteria around

Someone, I can't remember who, said that "life was water's way of moving itself around."

Nature already does this with meteors

[peter303]

About 50 Martian meteors have been discovered so- mostly on Antarctica glaciers. Thats probably a tiny fraction of thousands upon thousands to have rained upon the Earth. Couple this with discoveries that bacteria apparently have lived inside of rock deep in the Earth for tens of millions of year and you have a mechanism of infecting the entire solar system over the eons. Gravity wells make some transport directions more likely than others. But over the vast amounts of time probably samples of every planet and moon have reached every other.

My prediction is some parts of Mars are hospitable to extremophile life and we will eventually discover it. It may be canyons where water-bearing layers appear to leak now and then. I further predict this life will very much look like Earth's. And the interesting follow-on question will be which planet did life start on first.

Easy life return mission? Perhaps with Cassini?

[sznupi]

I wonder...

So we have this moon that possibly has life in its ocean. And geysers which put this water into known orbits. Together with the water they put salts. And life - if one exists there.

So..."orbital scoop" flying for few years has a big chance to catch some microbes for the ride. Unfortunatelly...it will be probably several more decades before the next mission to Saturn; several more decades before we can sent purpose built spacecraft.

However...we already have a spacecraft that was flying there for quite some time. Perhaps, once RTGs deplete to such a degree that the scientific package will have to be largery shut down, it is sensible to:

1) put Cassini into orbit which maximalises probabilities of catching something for the ride (and without too much risk of hitting some ice block)

2) after several more years - bring Cassini back (through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network for example). Put it into stable, high Earth orbit where it can wait for us to have means to investigate it (too bad we get rid of Shuttles, they would be usefull for that oe thing...)

It seems to me to be much better conclusion of the mission (even we won't find any signs of life on it) than sending it plunging towards Saturn...

Re:Implications

[sznupi]

They will just say "ahh, another glorious creation of gods". They've shown many times that inconsistent/false passages in "holy" texts can be ignored, new doctrines introduced.

It will get interesting only when we discover intelligent life that, during its evolution, didn't need the concept of gods. Though this is likely, IMHO, only in forms of intelligence that are NOT fragile, individual units (which feel the need to control the scary world, hence - gods, prayers, and so on), in case of hive-mind for example (I guess it will operate mostly in "me" and "that which does not exist" categories). But I suspect in this case religious folks will just dismiss its intelligence.

Oh well, in other cases it might be fun too - at least if "interstellar crusade" sounds fun to you.