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Space Moon

Organic Compounds Found In Plumes of Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus (space.com) 34

Posted by BeauHD from the hide-and-seek dept.
Scientists have detected new types of organic compounds in the plumes that have been erupting from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Space.com reports: NASA's Cassini spacecraft collected invaluable data and images of Saturn and its moons over the approximately 20 years that the mission took place. While the mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017, with the craft diving toward the planet in a "Grand Finale," scientists continue to study the wealth of data that they gathered during the mission. In one new study, scientists looked at the material that Enceladus ejects from its core using hydrothermal vents. The material mixes with water in the moon's subsurface ocean and is then emitted as water vapor and icy grains.

In studying these ejections, the team found organic molecules that are condensed onto these grains and which contain oxygen and nitrogen. This comes after the first discovery of organics on the moon in 2018. Similar compounds on Earth take part in the chemical reactions that form amino acids, which are the organic compounds that combine to form proteins and are essential to life as we know it. On Earth, energy, or heat, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor helps to fuel these amino acid-producing reactions. With these findings, scientists have suggested that perhaps something similar is happening on Enceladus and the hydrothermal vents under its subsurface ocean are aiding in the creation of amino acids on the moon. "If the conditions are right, these molecules coming from the deep ocean of Enceladus could be on the same reaction pathway as we see here on Earth. We don't yet know if amino acids are needed for life beyond Earth, but finding the molecules that form amino acids is an important piece of the puzzle," Nozair Khawaja, who led the research team from the Free University of Berlin, said in a statement.
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Organic Compounds Found In Plumes of Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus More

Organic Compounds Found In Plumes of Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus

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  • on his way to Mars.
    That will save humanity a few decades of academic work.

    • Yes, I would expect that Musk and his supporters know about the right amount about space travel to think that Enceladus is on the way to Mars. Gonna stop by Pandora and get some blue alien tail, too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by radja ( 58949 )

        Musk probably knows. Knowing that Saturn isn't between Mars and the Earth isn't exactly rocket science.

  • In a certain way, those discoveries are yet another blow into the idea of Transpermia. If amino acids can form itself spontaneously in worlds like Enceladus, there is no need to speculate how they could be able to go across Space and infect fertile worlds with Life. Amino acids (and with them other complex organic compounds) are aboundant, given the right conditions. They have formed more than four billion years ago on the young Earth. They have formed on Venus, we know them from Titan, Europa and Ganymed.

    • "Here we are finding smaller and soluble organic building blocks - potential precursors for amino acids and other ingredients required for life on Earth," co-author Jon Hillier said in the statement.

      OMG, we found methane!! It's an "organic molecule" and a "potential precursor for amino acids"!!

      Time for a press release!

    • Panspermia [wikipedia.org] (I've never seen it called "transpermia", but "meh") has been dead in the water as an idea since the Miller-Urey experiment [wikipedia.org]. It died again when spectroscopy got good enough (in the 1960s) to detect organic molecules in galactic dust clouds. Amino acids were demonstrated in such clouds in the 1970s, dealing panspermia a fatal blow. The discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the 1970s and the extension of such phenomena to understand geological evidence of similar but lower temperature ore dep

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        L. Ksanfomaliti: Planets. Moscow 1985.

        Yes, quite old ;)

        • Hmmm, only one hit coming up for that author - a Russian text book on the Solar System - done as a print-on-demand book. I don't think my Russian is up to reading that. Well, finding evidence of amino acids in the Venusian atmosphere, or on the Ganymedian surface, wouldn't shake the universe to it's core, since they (amino acids) are found in various bits of meteorites and comet comas.

          The JUICE mission will probably give us a lot more relevant data.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sique ( 173459 )
            I have a german edition of that book, printed in Leipzig. It has an error though. One sheet (16 pages) is missing, and another one is doubled instead. Thus the chapters for Neptune and Pluto are somewhat messed up.

  • A bit far-fetched ... (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @05:29AM (#59269118)

    ... to conclude organic chemistry from finding some atoms that organic chemicals use too.

    Surely, those atoms can be part of other molecules too.

    For the record: I actually think their prediction may be right. But the way they got there, might not be.

    • I think the significant finding is that of oxygen. Oxygen is very reactive so detecting it without it being bound to a metal like iron suggests that some organic chemistry may be occurring.

    • Re:A bit far-fetched ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @01:15PM (#59270564)
      Organic Chemistry (Ochem for short, or oh-shit-i-have-to-take-THAT? for long) is the chemistry of carbon compounds, whether through biological process or synthesis (since 1828). It's "organic" because it has a carbon compound, not because of how it was produced.

  • Somebody making enchiladas on Enceladus?

  • Uh oh (Score:3)

    by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @06:29AM (#59269218)
    I already have seen it somewhere [amazon.com]

  • I hope they are right in their far reaching conclusions.

    I would love a mission to check that of course. And on Europa. But hard to investigate below an immense crust of ice. Orbiters to study the ice would be neat. I wonder if the end of the ISS will allow for more budget for outer space scientific missions.

    Finally something interesting on slashdot !

    • Not by US. Retreats usually extend to other programs. China/India/etc maybe, but once ISS is gone other programs are likely to get degraded funding.

    • But hard to investigate below an immense crust of ice.

      Just to put that into some context, the deepest borehole drilled on Earth is a little over 12km deep. The ice crust of Enceladus is estimated at 30 to 40 km thick over an ocean around 10km deep. To drill that deeply nearly a billion and a half km away poses huge difficulties just in getting the hardware to site. I don't know about you, but when I've had to help to change out a cable reel carrying 10km of cable (not even the 50-odd km that would be neede

  • Oxygen is abundant everywhere in the solar system (though, it's generally mixed with hydrogen). Carbon is everywhere. So are most other elements, though generally in trace amounts. Since organic chemistry is nothing more than the study of carbon, why would the existence of organic compounds from an environment that has carbon in a heated solution surprise anyone? I think the opposite would have been an eye opener. If they had found NO organic chemistry it would have been a game changer.

  • Now we will have to fight a war over it.

  • This is how you get a protomolecule.

  • This story here is really interesting (Score:3)

    by fuzzyf ( 1129635 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @11:38AM (#59270094)
    I'm currently reading A Curious Moon where a fictional character helps you learn PostgreSQL while dealing with the actual data from Cassini.
    It's a really nice way to dive into the actual Cassini-story.

    So far it's highly recommended :)
  • The paper is open access at https://academic.oup.com/mnras... [oup.com] , but at this moment I'm getting a server error when I try to get the PDF.

    Abstract

    Saturnâ(TM)s moon Enceladus is erupting a plume of gas and ice grains from its south pole. Linked directly to the moonâ(TM)s subsurface global ocean, plume material travels through cracks in the icy crust and is ejected into space. The subsurface ocean is believed to be in contact with the rocky core, with ongoing hydrothermal activity present. The Cass

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