Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus Harbors Essential Elements For Life (reuters.com) 29
Researchers have discovered high concentrations of phosphorus in ice crystals emitted from Saturn's moon Enceladus, enhancing its potential to support life. The findings, based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, suggest that Enceladus may possess the necessary elements for life. Reuters reports: The discovery was based on data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the first to orbit Saturn, during its 13-year landmark exploration of the gaseous giant planet, its rings and its moons from 2004 to 2017. The same team previously confirmed that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich assortment of minerals and complex organic compounds, including the ingredients for amino acids, associated with life as scientists know it. But phosphorus, the least abundant of six chemical elements considered necessary to all living things -- the others are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur -- was still missing from the equation until now.
"It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth," the study's lead author, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said in a JPL press release. [...] One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds. "This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus' ocean," said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology." "Whether life could have originated in Enceladus' ocean remains an open question," Glein said.
"It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth," the study's lead author, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said in a JPL press release. [...] One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds. "This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus' ocean," said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology." "Whether life could have originated in Enceladus' ocean remains an open question," Glein said.
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I care about life way more than diamonds.
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I wish I had mod points. This is the best AC post I've seen on the slashdots since, well, maybe ever. Well done.
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Who cares about diamonds? If it weren't for DeBeers global monopoly, massive hording, and exploitative advertising campaigns, they'd be about as cheap as the gravel they are.
The only good thing about the insanely inflated price of diamonds is that it has created a market for lab grown diamonds, which can be far more perfect than anything found in nature, and should eventually be large enough to serve as next-generation semiconductor substrates.
Though you've got to wonder - if there are diamonds in the sky
Potential for life? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I see one of these articles I want to point out that the “potential to support life” is invariably based on the idea that life requires the same conditions as life on our planet. Oxygen, water, carbon, phosphorous. We think this is what it takes, but really we have an N of 1, and we might be an outlier
Re:Potential for life? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, "likely" is overstating it - with a sample size of one we can't say anything about probability. Though the fact that life seems to have appeared on Earth as soon as those conditions existed is tantalizingly promising.
However, what we do know is that XYZ conditions *allow* life to exist, and they are currently the *only* conditions we know for sure can do so, so finding them elsewhere certainly makes for a good place to look more closely. And since we're lucky enough to have several such promising lo
Great Filter (Score:2)
I suspect the Great Filter is composed of two data points:
1. Inverse square law
2. Likely impossibility of FTL travel for spacecraft
Those two data points would create a universe similar to the one we see.
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The thing is we're real latecomers to the party, third-generation stars like our own, rich in the heavier elements needed for life-as-we-know-it, started forming about 8 billion years ago, roughly four billion years before our own star formed.
If intelligent life is at all common, and Earth's development timeline is at all normal, then we should reasonably expect that intelligent civilizations started reaching our current level of technology roughly four billion years ago, and many of their stars will have a
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Of course, to develop multi-cellular, intelligent life, takes a long, long time (at least based on Earth's experience), and the conditions can easily change which can limit the amount of time available for this to occur. So while there are not any intelligent creates outside of Earth in our solar system, I would not be surprised in the least to find evidence of single-celle
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Not quite - the organic molecules that life is built from do form spontaneously under several different "right conditions". However, we've never actually witnessed witnessed life arise, or even obviously pre-biotic chemistry. Which isn't really that surprising - we've run a few small lab experiments for short periods of time, a tiny rounding error compared to the scales and times involved in just the error-bars on our estimates for when life first showed up here.
But the fact that we see fossil evidence of
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People who don't know much love to say that.
If you can admit you don't really know what you're talking about and maybe listen to people who do - biologists and chemists will be happy to explain why they've decided these things are requirements and not options.
You are not a secret genius who has figured out all those fancy boffins missed something basic in their field of study.
Planetary Scientists Full Employment Act (Score:1)
Keep spinning wild theories of were life "might be possible" in order to justify spacecraft to fly there to look for it.
There is no life on or in Enceladus, or anywhere else in the solar system outside of Earth.
Now if they could discover petroleum on Enceladus, or Titan, by all means, begin the tanker return missions.
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There is no life on or in Enceladus, or anywhere else in the solar system outside of Earth.
How would you know, if you don't send anything there to have a look?
Now if they could discover petroleum on Enceladus, or Titan, by all means, begin the tanker return missions.
Liquid natural gas okay?
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Right. We need to impoverish all other science in the quest for this holy grail.
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>There is no life on or in Enceladus, or anywhere else in the solar system outside of Earth.
I assume you've visited them all with an advanced laboratory and huge survey team to do an exhaustive search? No? Then your statement is *far* more speculative that the article's.
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I have visited them all. Came back from my last trip in Las Vegas. Almost got caught. I can definitively report that my hosts assured me there is no other life within 2000 light years of Earth. You can ask anyone who works at the CIA.
Abiotic hydrocarbons (Score:2)
Abiotic synthesis is the explanation for the presence of methane and other hydrocarbons everywhere in the Solar System. Except on Earth.
As the Monolith Said... (Score:1)
All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
Dream on (Score:2)
This search for life is like the dog chasing the car. Better hope y'all don't find it.
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If we did find some kind of microbe living a few inches below the surface on Mars, there are lots of things we would want to do: study the structure, classify different species, look for the equivalent of DNA/RNA, check if the microbe would survive in Earth conditions, check if it could cause damage, etc. We could run through our Earth biology experience from Linnaeus to van Leeuwenhoek to Franklin. We're more future-thinking than the car-chasing dog.
Obligatory SMBC (Score:1)
https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... [smbc-comics.com]
This one is spot-on!
WARNING! (Score:1)
So, lifeless then. (Score:2)
One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds.
So most likely the ocean(s) of Enceladus are lifeless. If there was life, it would be using the phosphorus and it wouldn't be available to be spewed out in the geysers.
That's why water-soluble phosphate compounds aren't common in Earth's oceans. It gets eaten, and quickly. We even have a name for it: an algae bloom.