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Signs of Water Found On Saturnian Moon Enceladus
Matt_dk writes "Scientists working on the Cassini space mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus. Their findings, based on analysis from data taken in plume fly-throughs in 2008 and reported in the journal Icarus, provide evidence for the presence of liquid water, which suggests the ingredients for life inside the icy moon. The Cassini plasma spectrometer, used to gather this data, also found other species of negatively charged ions including hydrocarbons."
Life needs energy, sure, but that doesn't mean the energy has to be in the form of solar light. Some of Solar System moons get quite a lot of energy by tidal heating; for an extreme example, see Io.
What I wonder is how plausible would be to get Cassini back through Interplanetary Transport Network (low energy routes throughout our system). In the future Cassini power will diminish to a point where it will be hard to keep experiment packages alife. But perhaps there would be just enough propellant by then to direct it back through ITN? Just enough power to keep main systems alive for few decades? Bring it closer to us, so in 50 years or so we can examine it easily. Perhaps something hatched on for the ride while Cassini was flying through plumes from Enceladus in orbit around Saturn...
One that hath name thou can not otter
I don't think either of you are qualified to make that assertation. A year of Bio/Physical Anthropology for extra credit is not enough.
You need to explain why its more likely that they adapted from solar sourced ancestors as opposed to thermal heat vents. I think that form of adaptation would be quite rare, as evolution takes a long time. And you can't expect a solar sourced species to survive in a non-solar environment very long.
I was not involved in this study, but I've published in Icarus before. It's a good journaly, but has notoriously slow publication times. If you actually look at the article, you'll see that the original submission date was Nov. 2008. It went through review and was sent back for revision. Given the time, it's likely the revision was also sent out for review. It was accepted in July 2009. It's probably been available on the website shortly after that, but because Icarus only prints a certain number of articles per issue, it's taken this long to slog through the publishing queue.