NASA has just announced that "Enceladus" has chemicals that when found on Earth tend to indicate life, suggesting that there might be living things under its icy shell.
The paper on Jupiter's Europa moon, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, contains the new Hubble Space Telescope findings.
The latest findings suggest that Enceladus - a small, icy moon a billion miles farther from the sun than Earth - has almost all of these ingredients for habitability.
Thanks to Cassini, organic chemicals-carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur-which are the basic building blocks of life, were seen spraying forth from the "tiger stripe" cracks on the cold surface of the moon. But our planet's mostly liquid surface appears to be an outlier among our system's oceans-most large reservoirs of water exist on planets and moons far from the sun's heat and therefore can exist only beneath a frozen solid crust.
In fact, Enceladus may have methane breathing alien life already there.
"Now, Enceladus is high on the list in the solar system for showing habitable conditions", said Hunter Waite, one of the study s leading researchers.
Families celebrate Easter with worship service and Easter egg hunt
The resurrection of Jesus was the literal hope for the plan of God to save a chosen people. "That's just really awesome to me". I love Easter because the music is so uplifting - and reminds me of the people I love who sang it with me for so many years.
However, "confirmation that the chemical energy for life exists within the ocean of a small moon of Saturn is an important milestone in our search for habitable worlds beyond Earth", she said.
On Earth, where we find water, we find life, so that's where we like to look for life in space, too. Water, ice, traces of methane, salts and other carbon compounds were found as well as silicates and hydrogen, according to a report from The Guardian.
A picture of the ice plumes on Enceladus taken by Cassini.
The new findings from Nasa's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2002, indicate that ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and organics were also found coming from the plumes, nearly all the ingredients needed to support life on earth. That's how the Cassini team found hydrogen in the water. The spacecraft traveled through the plume in October 2015 and detected the gas. New observations from NASA's Galileo spacecraft suggests Europa's plume, like the plumes on Enceladus, is associated with warmer temperature readings.
From information obtained by the spacecraft, there is evidence of chemical reactions under the icy surface of the moon. Says Jim Green director of planetary science at NASA.
The Europa Clipper is set to launch in the 2020s and will make close flybys to Europa to study the oceans there to determine whether or not the same thing is happening there as on Enceladus, and importantly whether or not the moon could possibly support life.
Comments