water found on saturn's moon Enceladus?

tonea2003

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very interesting report from nasa indicating evidence of hot water activity and with it the possibilty of life on another world

<a class="postlink" href="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=48922" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/displa ... s_ID=48922</a>


Things to know:
Cassini finds first evidence of active hot-water chemistry beyond planet Earth
Findings in two separate papers support the notion
The results have important implications for the habitability of icy worlds
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first clear evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus exhibits signs of present-day hydrothermal activity which may resemble that seen in the deep oceans on Earth. The implications of such activity on a world other than our planet open up unprecedented scientific possibilities.

"These findings add to the possibility that Enceladus, which contains a subsurface ocean and displays remarkable geologic activity, could contain environments suitable for living organisms," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The locations in our solar system where extreme environments occur in which life might exist may bring us closer to answering the question: are we alone in the universe."

Hydrothermal activity occurs when seawater infiltrates and reacts with a rocky crust and emerges as a heated, mineral-laden solution, a natural occurrence in Earth's oceans. According to two science papers, the results are the first clear indications an icy moon may have similar ongoing active processes.

The first paper, published this week in the journal Nature, relates to microscopic grains of rock detected by Cassini in the Saturn system. An extensive, four-year analysis of data from the spacecraft, computer simulations and laboratory experiments led researchers to the conclusion the tiny grains most likely form when hot water containing dissolved minerals from the moon's rocky interior travels upward, coming into contact with cooler water. Temperatures required for the interactions that produce the tiny rock grains would be at least 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius).

"It's very exciting that we can use these tiny grains of rock, spewed into space by geysers, to tell us about conditions on -- and beneath -- the ocean floor of an icy moon," said the paper's lead author Sean Hsu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder.


This illustration depicts potential origins of methane found in the plume of gas and ice particles that sprays from Saturn's moon, Enceladus. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute


Illustration of Enceladus sea floor.





Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer (CDA) instrument repeatedly detected miniscule rock particles rich in silicon, even before Cassini entered Saturn's orbit in 2004. By process of elimination, the CDA team concluded these particles must be grains of silica, which is found in sand and the mineral quartz on Earth. The consistent size of the grains observed by Cassini, the largest of which were 6 to 9 nanometers, was the clue that told the researchers a specific process likely was responsible.
On Earth, the most common way to form silica grains of this size is hydrothermal activity under a specific range of conditions; namely, when slightly alkaline and salty water that is super-saturated with silica undergoes a big drop in temperature.

"We methodically searched for alternate explanations for the nanosilica grains, but every new result pointed to a single, most likely origin," said co-author Frank Postberg, a Cassini CDA team scientist at Heidelberg University in Germany.

Hsu and Postberg worked closely with colleagues at the University of Tokyo who performed the detailed laboratory experiments that validated the hydrothermal activity hypothesis. The Japanese team, led by Yasuhito Sekine, verified the conditions under which silica grains form at the same size Cassini detected. The researchers think these conditions may exist on the seafloor of Enceladus, where hot water from the interior meets the relatively cold water at the ocean bottom.

The extremely small size of the silica particles also suggests they travel upward relatively quickly from their hydrothermal origin to the near-surface sources of the moon's geysers. From seafloor to outer space, a distance of about 30 miles (50 kilometers), the grains spend a few months to a few years in transit, otherwise they would grow much larger.

The authors point out that Cassini's gravity measurements suggest Enceladus' rocky core is quite porous, which would allow water from the ocean to percolate into the interior. This would provide a huge surface area where rock and water could interact.

The second paper, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests hydrothermal activity as one of two likely sources of methane in the plume of gas and ice particles that erupts from the south polar region of Enceladus. The finding is the result of extensive modeling by French and American scientists to address why methane, as previously sampled by Cassini, is curiously abundant in the plume.

The team found that, at the high pressures expected in the moon's ocean, icy materials called clathrates could form that imprison methane molecules within a crystal structure of water ice. Their models indicate that this process is so efficient at depleting the ocean of methane that the researchers still needed an explanation for its abundance in the plume.

In one scenario, hydrothermal processes super-saturate the ocean with methane. This could occur if methane is produced faster than it is converted into clathrates. A second possibility is that methane clathrates from the ocean are dragged along into the erupting plumes and release their methane as they rise, like bubbles forming in a popped bottle of champagne.

The authors agree both scenarios are likely occurring to some degree, but they note that the presence of nanosilica grains, as documented by the other paper, favors the hydrothermal scenario.

"We didn't expect that our study of clathrates in the Enceladus ocean would lead us to the idea that methane is actively being produced by hydrothermal processes," said lead author Alexis Bouquet, a graduate student at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Bouquet worked with co-author Hunter Waite, who leads the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) team at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Cassini first revealed active geological processes on Enceladus in 2005 with evidence of an icy spray issuing from the moon's south polar region and higher-than-expected temperatures in the icy surface there. With its powerful suite of complementary science instruments, the mission soon revealed a towering plume of water ice and vapor, salts and organic materials that issues from relatively warm fractures on the wrinkled surface. Gravity science results published in 2014 strongly suggested the presence of a 6-mile- (10-kilometer-) deep ocean beneath an ice shell about 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) thick.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini CDA instrument was provided by the German Aerospace Center. The instrument team, led by Ralf Srama, is based at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about Cassini, visit:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.nasa.gov/cassini" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nasa.gov/cassini</a>
and

<a class="postlink" href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov</a>
 
Doesn't Europa have a chance of the same too. We never get anywhere in space, if only the whole planet would pool its resources together there would be colonies on the moon 10 years from now. Great news though. Send a probe that can deploy sub type thingys with cameras to have a butchers then relay it back here on live tv, glorious. Life is probably everywhere imo.
 
We need to act pre-emptively and blow that moon to pieces before those amoebic fuckers discover nukes.
 
aguero93:20 said:
We need to act pre-emptively and blow that moon to pieces before those amoebic fuckers discover nukes.

Agreed. Within 20,000,000 years they may be able to start a fire 750 million miles away.

If they exist.
 
aguero93:20 said:
We need to act pre-emptively and blow that moon to pieces before those amoebic fuckers discover nukes.

Spoken like a true god fearing American, brings a tear to the eye hehe.

I think since they confirmed liquid water last year the odds of tidal heating (on the moon's rocky core) were already huge.
This is great news to confirm though, i wonder if those vents it will almost certainly have are covered in extremophiles.

Interesting stuff.
 
Just to clarify some points;

We have known about the water and speculated about the large amounts of it on Enceladus for a long time. In fact there have been speculations about it for a long time to the point where on this topic 3/4 years ago on here I said that despite efforts to look at Europa, Enceladus was easily the best candidate for life.

What has been actually found, specifically, is dust that has a high probability to have been spewed from an underground vent into space. This is something that Cassini has been looking for as many guessed that Enceladus would have these.

The speculation was based off of the properties of the Saturn system. Enceladus is only 500km in diameter or about Manchester to Lille give or take. Yet it ejects vapour into space. Taking these two facts and the normal forces of gravity, it is sensible to postulate that the innards of the moon are getting dragged in every direction as it is orbiting around the huge gravitational well that is Saturn. And as we know, those types of forces create friction and therefore heat.

Now we have an icy shell with a hot inner core, it again is sensible to say that there is probably water below the surface because heat melts ice. Then water moving into an active core you could probably guess that pressure build ups with occur, etc. Our planet is not very special geologically, the laws of the Universe are the same everywhere.

The significance of the above report is that some of the particles in the dust that they have found can ONLY be out there due to a specific process where hot hydrothermal vents are ejecting materials.

This is super important because firstly it confirms that the thinking about Enceladus and the computer simulations done have generally been correct, and secondly because we know that much of early life on Earth formed and sustained itself using hydrothermal vents in the early oceans.

On Enceladus we now have an abundant source of energy, water that can be used as a universal solvent and a constantly changing environment. This has now become destination number 1 for finding life. Many astrobiologists seem to be currently suggesting in private (as in Twitter/forums, etc, not in places where they have to academically support their opinions I mean) that it's almost certain that life will be there in some form as the conditions are absolutely perfect for it. Not just microbiotic life either but potentially macro life; types of what we might classify as fish and plants. It's a very exciting time for people in that field and whilst enthusiasm will increase hyperbole, this is one of those moments where I feel that it is actually justified in terms of what we can now confirm about the moon. Justified enough that the ESA/NASA are almost certainly now thinking about missions to there as an increased priority. The space race was a very nice boost to the motivation but being the first agency to confirm an extraterrestrial being must be tantalisingly attractive to its administrators, and this is another streetlight that has flickered on in the potential motorway to Enceladus.

In another post on here some time in discussions gone past, I argued that I believe that microscopic life will turn out to be incredibly abundant not just in the Universe but even in our own Solar System. The thing that has always convinced me of this is that, and yes this is sort of a catchphrase now, the laws of the Universe are the same everywhere. All of the elements outside of Hydrogen were formed in stars and as Hydrogen is roughly spread out evenly across the Universe then you can expect roughly an even distribution of the elements. So you take the same ingredients (the elements and their abundance), then you take the same processes (the laws of the Universe) and I don't think it is too far to stretch the imagination and suggest that you will often come out with the same result of life. We've polluted our thinking with sentimentally in the wrong direction - human intelligence may well be exceedingly rare but life itself doesn't seem so special. There's billions of species that live or have lived on our planet in all sorts of conditions from hydrothermal vents deep in the oceans of the Arctic to deserts in Sahara where rainfall occurs only once every few hundred years. It's very good at adapting to environments. I see no reason why this logic doesn't hold elsewhere in the Solar System.

EDIT: Reading that back, helium wasn't formed in stars either and there's thoughts on lithium and beryllium but the larger point about stellar nucleosynthesis remains.
 
Damocles said:
Just to clarify some points;

We have known about the water and speculated about the large amounts of it on Enceladus for a long time. In fact there have been speculations about it for a long time to the point where on this topic 3/4 years ago on here I said that despite efforts to look at Europa, Enceladus was easily the best candidate for life.

What has been actually found, specifically, is dust that has a high probability to have been spewed from an underground vent into space. This is something that Cassini has been looking for as many guessed that Enceladus would have these.

The speculation was based off of the properties of the Saturn system. Enceladus is only 500km in diameter or about Manchester to Lille give or take. Yet it ejects vapour into space. Taking these two facts and the normal forces of gravity, it is sensible to postulate that the innards of the moon are getting dragged in every direction as it is orbiting around the huge gravitational well that is Saturn. And as we know, those types of forces create friction and therefore heat.

Now we have an icy shell with a hot inner core, it again is sensible to say that there is probably water below the surface because heat melts ice. Then water moving into an active core you could probably guess that pressure build ups with occur, etc. Our planet is not very special geologically, the laws of the Universe are the same everywhere.

The significance of the above report is that some of the particles in the dust that they have found can ONLY be out there due to a specific process where hot hydrothermal vents are ejecting materials.

This is super important because firstly it confirms that the thinking about Enceladus and the computer simulations done have generally been correct, and secondly because we know that much of early life on Earth formed and sustained itself using hydrothermal vents in the early oceans.

On Enceladus we now have an abundant source of energy, water that can be used as a universal solvent and a constantly changing environment. This has now become destination number 1 for finding life. Many astrobiologists seem to be currently suggesting in private (as in Twitter/forums, etc, not in places where they have to academically support their opinions I mean) that it's almost certain that life will be there in some form as the conditions are absolutely perfect for it. Not just microbiotic life either but potentially macro life; types of what we might classify as fish and plants. It's a very exciting time for people in that field and whilst enthusiasm will increase hyperbole, this is one of those moments where I feel that it is actually justified in terms of what we can now confirm about the moon. Justified enough that the ESA/NASA are almost certainly now thinking about missions to there as an increased priority. The space race was a very nice boost to the motivation but being the first agency to confirm an extraterrestrial being must be tantalisingly attractive to its administrators, and this is another streetlight that has flickered on in the potential motorway to Enceladus.

In another post on here some time in discussions gone past, I argued that I believe that microscopic life will turn out to be incredibly abundant not just in the Universe but even in our own Solar System. The thing that has always convinced me of this is that, and yes this is sort of a catchphrase now, the laws of the Universe are the same everywhere. All of the elements outside of Hydrogen were formed in stars and as Hydrogen is roughly spread out evenly across the Universe then you can expect roughly an even distribution of the elements. So you take the same ingredients (the elements and their abundance), then you take the same processes (the laws of the Universe) and I don't think it is too far to stretch the imagination and suggest that you will often come out with the same result of life. We've polluted our thinking with sentimentally in the wrong direction - human intelligence may well be exceedingly rare but life itself doesn't seem so special. There's billions of species that live or have lived on our planet in all sorts of conditions from hydrothermal vents deep in the oceans of the Arctic to deserts in Sahara where rainfall occurs only once every few hundred years. It's very good at adapting to environments. I see no reason why this logic doesn't hold elsewhere in the Solar System.

EDIT: Reading that back, helium wasn't formed in stars either and there's thoughts on lithium and beryllium but the larger point about stellar nucleosynthesis remains.


Yeah agree , that's exactly what I was about to write !!
 
aguero93:20 said:
We need to act pre-emptively and blow that moon to pieces before those amoebic fuckers discover nukes.

It's the stream of new immigrants that worries me.
 
dan_bo said:
aguero93:20 said:
We need to act pre-emptively and blow that moon to pieces before those amoebic fuckers discover nukes.

Agreed. Within 20,000,000 years they may be able to start a fire 750 million miles away.

If they exist.

not on a ocean planet they wouldn't
 

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