Saturn Moon Could Be Hospitable To Life 153
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by
ScuttleMonkey
from the it's-life-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
from the it's-life-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
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.'"
Nothing new (Score:2, Informative)
I've heard about this over a year ago, at a minimum.
Same goes with Jupiter's moon Europa ( http://www.solarviews.com/eng/europa.htm [solarviews.com] ). Signs are that it could have liquid water inside, as quoted from the site: "Since liquid water existed in the past, could life have formed and even exist today? The primary ingredients for life are water, heat, and organic compounds obtained from comets and meteorites. Europa has had all three. From the images and data collected by the Galileo spacecraft, scientists believe that a subsurface ocean existed in relative recent history and may still be present beneath the icy surface. Europa's water should have frozen long ago, but warming could be occurring due to the tidal tug of war with Jupiter and neighboring moons."
Same site mentions that the water has been spotted spewing forth from Enceladus in July 14, 2005, being also noted as a "dramatic warm spot centered on the pole that is probably a sign of internal heat leaking out of the icy moon" ( http://www.solarviews.com/eng/enceladus.htm [solarviews.com] )
Re:Obligatory 2010 Quote (Score:3, Informative)
And according to "2061: Odyssey Three," all attempts to send robotic probes failed when they got close- it wasn't just an idle warning; a monolith stuck around on Europa in order to protect it from interference. So while the other Galilean moons were colonized soon after Jupiter was ignited, humanity really did stay off the surface. Until a gigantic diamond hit Europa, anyway.
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
New stuff (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it's only showing up again because Cassini made another Enceladus flyby in late 09 and they're just releasing the pictures.
This JPL article [nasa.gov] gives a better idea of what was new this flyby.
So basically, higher resolution images have allowed them to isolate the heat that they detected earlier (from the 2005 flyby) as a "broad swath" to specifically the cracks in the surface from which water is spewing, confirming their previous hypothesis.
Thread hijacking, yeah! (Score:2, Informative)
NASA article: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20090624.html [nasa.gov] :-)
picture: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia06191.html [nasa.gov]
Video: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/flash/Enceladus/enceladus.html [nasa.gov] <-- no reading
It'd be awesome to live on a saturn, especially if you have a view of Saturn (how large would it be on the sky?) ... would be pretty dark though, especially if the hot spot is on the south pole.
Btw. it was the Cassini spacecraft that made the flyby.
Re:Obligatory 2010 Quote (Score:3, Informative)
It's been a while since I've read the book as well, but IIRC, the Chinese received a warning shot across the bow before the Really Bad Stuff occurred.
No, they definitely did not (I've just started 3001, so this is fairly fresh).
*SPOILER ALERT*
As the joint US-Russian vessel Leonov was en route to rendezvous with Discovery, they got reports that China had secretly sent off their own mission to the Jupiter system, presumably to beat the US to the derelict vessel. The only problem was that it seemed to be a suicide mission, as there was no clear way they could return. Later, as Leonov approached Jupiter, they witnessed China complete their slingshot maneuver around Jupiter, and they assumed the point was to enter a trajectory to meet up with Discovery. However, it soon became clear that they actually aimed for Europa. At this point, the Leonov crew they realized that China's plan was actually to land on Europa and use it as a source of propellant, at which point they'd be able to explore the Jupiter system, including Discovery, and then return to earth.
Eventually China did land safely on Europa, and it seemed all was well. Unfortunately, the flood lights they used to illuminate the area around their ship attracted an undersea life form that resembled some sort of plant life. This life form pursued the Chinese vessel and destroyed it, leaving just one survivor who was able to radio back to Leonov to report the event before he died.
So at this stage it was clear that there was life on Europa, but that it was fairly primitive. At the end of 2010, the monolith replicated itself, surrounding Jupiter and forcing an implosion, which ignited Jupiter forming the star Lucifer, with the goal of creating an environment on Europa that would be conducive to the development of higher life forms. And just prior to the implosion, David Bowman instructed the now-reactivated Hal to send the famous message to Earth: "All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there." Hal was then "extracted" from the computer prior to the ship being destroyed, and he joined Bowman to wait until they were needed again.
Re:Not impressed (Score:2, Informative)
"Biological fragments floating around in space" would not find their way into the warm environment under ground.
I don't think you have a grasp of the time scales we're talking about. We're talking about BILLIONS of years. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old [usgs.gov]. While I don't know the age of Enceladus, I think it's safe to assume it's contemporaneous with the Earth. This means that's even incredibly improbable events may have indeed occurred.
Think about this: I don't think anyone knows for sure about where the initial organic compounds arrived on Earth, but organic compounds (i.e. molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen) are exceedingly common throughout the universe, so let's say for sake of argument that the compounds on Earth, initially came from some place else. (Which in a sense they have to since, atoms heavier than hydrogen only form in stars). In the ensuing 4.5 BILLION years. It's improbable that these compounds would come together and form more complex compounds, but yet they have. These compounds in turn, formed more complex compounds, and so and so, until eventually we're here. We're talking a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters writing the greatest novel known to man. ("'It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times.' 'The BLURST of times'? You stupid monkey!") Given enough time, it WILL happen.
Now has it happened? I don't know. You don't know. No one knows. None of us will know until we send a probe with sensitive enough instruments down into one of those fissures. My point is, that you're thinking to small. Humans don't have an intuitive idea of the scale of the universe, either in size or time. We think still think 100 years is a long time, even though people live that long. We think a 2000 years is the distant past We only recorded the last 5000 years [wikipedia.org]. Let's go back further. As a species we're only 500,000 years old. That's .0000500 billion years. In other words, nothing. You're thinking too small.