Saturn Moon Could Be Hospitable To Life

shmG writes to share that recent imagery from Saturn's moon Enceladus indicate that it may be hospitable to life. "NASA said on Tuesday that a flyby of planet's Enceladus moon showed small jets of water spewing from the southern hemisphere, while infrared mapping of the surface revealed temperatures warmer than previously expected. 'The huge amount of heat pouring out of the tiger stripe fractures may be enough to melt the ice underground,' said John Spencer, a composite infrared spectrometer team member based at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. 'Results like this make Enceladus one of the most exciting places we've found in the solar system.'"

Comments

Re:Not impressed

[Chris Burke]

Possibly 500 million years or more and Enceladus doesn't have that as well.

Possibly. But we've found prokaryote fossils from only 1 billion years after the earth's crust formed. So either life got busy evolving right away, or it doesn't necessarily take that long. Frankly I would avoid drawing strong conclusions either way based on the current state of abiogenesis theories.

Besides, in the larger picture of "how often to potentially habitable environments arise and what forms do they take?" I find this very exciting even under the most likely case that we find no evidence of life on this moon. We've gone from a model of the solar system where every rock that wasn't ours being right-out as far as life having a chance, to having a variety of environments that at least hypothetically could support it. Then I start thinking about our infant search for exoplanets and I get even more excited.

Re:Not impressed

[TapeCutter]

I'm unimpressed by your arguments and see no reason for your pessimisim. One of the best theories we have of abiogenisis is that it formed around undersea volcanic vents. Since the tidal forces of Staurn are heating the moon from the inside causing similar vents to appear on the surface it safe to say that Earth like vents are occuring in the rocky core of the moon. Abiogenisis in 10 minutes - "No rediculous improbability, no supernatural forces, no lightening striking a mud puddle. Just Chemistry!"