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Ocean Spray On Saturn Moon Contains Crucial Constituents For Life (theguardian.com)
Astronomers have found that blasts of ocean spray erupting from the Saturn moon of Enceladus contain complex organic molecules, "making it the only place beyond Earth known to harbor crucial constituents for life as we know it," reports The Guardian. From the report: Astronomers detected the compounds in plumes of water and ice that shoot from huge fractures in the south pole of Enceladus, a 300-mile-wide ice ball that orbits Saturn along with 52 other moons. Enceladus stands out among the planet's natural satellites because it hosts a global water ocean beneath its frozen crust. German and U.S. scientists found tell-tale signs of organic molecules far more complex than amino acids and 10 times heavier than methane in data gathered by Nasa's Cassini probe as it flew over the fractures on Enceladus. Known as "tiger stripes," the fissures reach several miles down into the ice and are largely filled with ocean water that percolates up from the ocean.
Writing in the journal Nature, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist who worked on the data at Heidelberg University, and his colleagues describe their analysis of fresh Cassini data that shows that most ice particles blasting out of Enceladus are almost pure water. But a small proportion, about 1%, are rich in organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and potentially nitrogen too. Some were made up of hundreds of atoms. "Our results mark the first ever detection of complex organics coming from an extraterrestrial water world," said Postberg.
Writing in the journal Nature, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist who worked on the data at Heidelberg University, and his colleagues describe their analysis of fresh Cassini data that shows that most ice particles blasting out of Enceladus are almost pure water. But a small proportion, about 1%, are rich in organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and potentially nitrogen too. Some were made up of hundreds of atoms. "Our results mark the first ever detection of complex organics coming from an extraterrestrial water world," said Postberg.
It's amazing to think that on earth it just contains cranberries.
https://www.nature.com/article...
This makes this sound almost like we can do a long distance crystallography on these.
Luckily in the article itself it explains that what they mean is the presence of peaks characteristic of aromatic rings and
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Now certified Organic.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Solar system with regard to (potentially) habitable environments:
Venus:it is speculated that there are proper conditions in the upper atmosphere, which contains water vapor and where temperatures are right, spots of UV absorption are detected, yet not explained
Earth:abundance of life, the earliest fossils indicate that life started as soon as there were proper conditions, some even speculate that there might be intelligent life ;-)
Mars:had proper conditions in the past, is smaller so it cooled faster (if any life, then likely much sooner then on Earth), had water and denser atmosphere, now there are complex organic molecules (recently detected by Curiosity) and seasonal changes of methane, which is a clue, however can also be explained by some geological processes
Ceres:organics and "... may have a remnant internal ocean of liquid water under the layer of ice ..." wiki
Jupiter:Europa - vast subsurface H2O ocean with detected plumes, Ganymede - subsurface H2O ocean (additionally own magnetic field), Callisto - small subsurface H2O ocean (likely)
Saturn:Enceladus - subsurface H2O ocean, detected plumes, very likely conditions similar to Earth ocean vents (which are hypothesized to be the cradle for life), Titan - surface methane lakes with rain and thick atmosphere, hypothesized subsurface H2O ocean with enough organics to "cook" something
Pluto:hypothesized subsurface H2O ocean
All the above we know, because we send some probes there, we have never sent any probe capable of directly detecting life only organics (except Vikings) and mostly organics were detected (Vikings detected life - however the results were inconclusive, aka there is other explanation for the data). There are still places like Triton, which is geologically active and is expected to be very similar to Pluto.
Vast number of exoplanet in habitable zones, which we now have technology to remotely sense (not money or commitment however).
For comparison: