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]

The conditions on Enceladus are believed to be short lived. It hasn't been going on for billions of years so complex life forms can not have had time to evolve.

And... you wouldn't be impressed by simple life forms?

Okay, well, that's cool, but why you were paying any attention at all is beyond me. We're pretty sure there's no complex life anywhere else in the solar system.

Personally I'd be gobsmacked, flabbergasted, and impressed to all hell if we found even the most primitive of prokaryote.

Re:alright

[Kell Bengal]

Ask not what the space program can do for you, but what you can do for the space program.