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

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?

[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.