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Saturn moon 'able to support life'
- PaulHoule 9y agoNot a huge surprise. Most likely our kind of environment is an unusual place for life, it might be much more normal for life outside the frost line to run on geothermal energy (where there are 10 or so bodies with liquid water) as opposed to the one small rock that didn't get all the water boiled away by the sun.
- JustAnotherPat 9y agoThe end of God is near.
- nzonbi 9y agoIf life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations on the universe.
- disantlor 9y agohow would determine that it's completely disconnected? not asking snarkily. seems like you could push the goalposts back to say that whatever allows for life on earth is true of earth + our neighborhood/solar system, but not necessarily elsewhere, sort of like how the definition of AI keeps expanding.
- marktangotango 9y agoWell, deep sea, thermal vent life is predominantly blind on earth at least. One may postulate this form of life is much less likely to form technological civilizations thus moderating such. Thoughts?
- maxxxxx 9y agoThey may end up like the creatures in the "The Abyss" and be really good at manipulating water. Who knows?
- technotony 9y agoThese are separate variables in the equation. The drake equation multiplies a bunch of probabilities together, one of which is "probability of planet having life" and another is "probability of life becoming technologically sophisticated". A the moment we don't really understand how life starts, so it could be really really unlikely or it could be pretty common. finding independent life events in our solar system means it's pretty common (otherwise it could be 0.00001%). Here's the full equation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
- civilian 9y agoSo-- there are caveats. A lot of deep sea life are able to see, and it's because deep sea life also generates their own light. It's a way to communicate to mates, and a way to notice prey, and a way to bait smaller predators. I also think that echolocation has potential to be equal or better to eyesight! Bats and dolphins do great with it, and I think that it's easy to think of echolocation as being a _visual_ stimuli, even though it's not lightwave-based. I think the biggest hurdle for an underwater sentient species trying to become more advanced is the difficulties with tool-building. Simple stone tools could be made, but it becomes a lot harder to smelt iron and start doing metal-working.
- outworlder 9y agoOn the other hand, imagine the neat tricks they could come up with using magnesium alone. Would they have to be underwater, though? They could use the sea surface, provided the atmosphere is not toxic to them.
- 36bydesign 9y agoIsn't the surface frozen?
- charles-salvia 9y agoBased on the developments in exo-planet research along with discoveries like this over the past couple of years, I would conjecture that life is ridiculously common. But by life, I mean microbial life. I would imagine that multi-cellular life is much rarer, and life capable of reaching human-level intelligence and beyond is probably absurdly rare, on the level of something like one species per galaxy. It's all worthless conjecture, of course, but the point is I wouldn't be surprised if microbial life is very, very common.
- Retric 9y agoOn earth the jump from single celled life to multi celled life was very rapid relative to how long planets can probably support life on average. The first evidence of multicellularity is from cyanobacteria-like organisms that lived 3–3.5 billion years ago.[5] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism Now this is a Biofilms ala mats of multi celled organisms so it's hard to draw a clear line based on the fossils. Other contenders are much younger, but even if you use sexual reproduction as the benchmark that's still within the first 3 billion years and earth likely has another 1.75 billion to 3.25 billion years before it gets to hot.
- nostrademons 9y agoI'm kinda curious if there's any evidence that would support or rule out intelligent life having existed on earth before. I mean, if humanity goes extinct and it's another 65 million years before another intelligent species evolves, what evidence would they have of our existence? All our buildings would've long since crumbled into dust or been crushed by plate tectonics. Metal will corrode and rust away after a few thousand years. Our largest stone monuments will be gone after 10,000 or so. You'll find occasional fossilized skeletons, but all that would tell future species is that a bipedal mammal with a large brain once existed. Even plastics, the bane of environmentalists, degrade over a couple thousand years. Probably the only thing we'd see would be a huge mass extinction and an unusually rapid change in the earth's climate. Which we've seen several times in the geologic record already.
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- moomin 9y agoIt would be, but let's not get ahead of ourselves: all they've done is found evidence that it would be habitable by extremophile organisms. There's no evidence there actually are any.
- moomin 9y agoIt would be, but let's not get ahead of ourselves: all they've done is found evidence that it would be habitable by extremophile organisms. There's no evidence there actually are any.
- ufo 9y agoTechnically, there are only 8 planets now :)
- rspeer 9y agoI would say nearly everyone in astronomy and education is in agreement right now that there are at least 9 planets. The only question is which ones they are. (Mike Brown, the "Pluto killer", is searching for the distant gravitational influence that he believes to be a legit ninth planet.)
- tmalsburg2 9y agoWhat's the posterior distribution over numbers of life forms in the universe under some conservative prior and after finding that this moon has life, too? (Plus assuming that these events are independent, which they are probably not.)
- adekok 9y ago> If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, IIRC (I can't find the reference now), the "dinosaur killer" asteroid would put rocks from Earth into space. With sufficient velocity that they could reach nearby solar systems within 100M years. So from a strictly physical point of view, I would argue that the odds of Earth "infecting" Europa with life in the past 3 billion years are pretty much 100%.
- scoofy 9y ago>So from a strictly physical point of view, I would argue that the odds of Earth "infecting" Europa with life in the past 3 billion years are pretty much 100%. This is exactly why europa is so important. It's that the gravity well of jupiter is so great, that infection of europa is extremely unlikely, rather than being extremely likely. Europa would be a vastly better case for arguing separate origins of life than any other place in our solar system. Since earth has only existed for a short time in the grand scheme of things, and supposing that life indeed sprung here on its own, the odds of a random rock from a random few impacts landed on europa, rather than jupiter, in such a way to get to survive is absurdly small.
- hackuser 9y agoEuropa is an extremely tiny target to hit randomly from Earth, probably made smaller by the fact that, in order to hit Europa, the object has to pass near Jupiter without getting pulled into it. On the other hand, there are billions of years of random attempts, as you said.
- adrianN 9y agoBut there is a big lump of mass near Europa that tends to attract projectiles.
- kerbalspacepro 9y agoYou mean the wormhole with a blackhole on the other side?
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- IndianAstronaut 9y agoIf life was not there, I would wager that life is exceedingly rare in our universe.
- otempomores 9y agoA dark forrest teaming with live
- otempomores 9y agoA dark forrest teaming with live
- jordache 9y agowould you be really surprised though? I've already come to the conclusion that there is/was some sort of life within our solar system. Intelligent life is much more rare. If there is some evidence of that in our solar system, I would be floored
- ziikutv 9y agoMermaids?
- Symmetry 9y agoIt wouldn't really be surprising. Prokaryotic life appeared on Earth very quickly after the Earth cooled down. But it took a very long time after that for Eukaryotic cells to develop. Just going from Earth history I'd expect lots of planets with bacterial mats but very few with complex or multi-cellular life.
- reubenswartz 9y agoIt seems like it happened "very quickly" compared to the evolution of eukaryotic cells and multicellular life, but it still took hundreds of millions of years, and it probably happened once or a handful of times, not all over the planet. I share your expectations, but it's hard to know if it's common even for bacterial-level life to arise.
- _rpd 9y agoHere's the paper mentioned in the article ... Cassini finds molecular hydrogen in the Enceladus plume: Evidence for hydrothermal processes > Saturn's moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean covered by a layer of ice. Some liquid escapes into space through cracks in the ice, which is the source of one of Saturn's rings. In October 2015, the Cassini spacecraft flew directly through the plume of escaping material and sampled its chemical composition. Waite et al. found that the plume contains molecular hydrogen, H2, a sign that the water in Enceladus' ocean is reacting with rocks through hydrothermal processes (see the Perspective by Seewald). This drives the ocean out of chemical equilibrium, in a similar way to water around Earth's hydrothermal vents, potentially providing a source of chemical energy. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6334/155 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6334/155
- shrimp_emoji 9y agoA way to remember it is that Enceladus is the snowball with the blue "tiger stripes" on the south pole (grooved vents through which shoot streams of ice crystals [driven by tidal heating along its orbit around Saturn]).
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoBeautiful image.
- svisser 9y agoCoincidentally a book was written a few decades ago called "Ringmakers of Saturn" which discusses the presence of alien life around Saturn as well.
- pasbesoin 9y agoJust in the last day or so, reporting on some experiment supposedly demonstrating that asteroid impacts on Earth are/were capable of creating the amino acid precursors to RNA. Yeah, really, this demonstrates nothing, on its own. But, interesting to think about.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoWell, Enceladus has an energy source that could perhaps be a source of energy for some kind of living organism. "Able" kind of says that all you need for life is some kind of available energy, which... let's just call that "unproven".
- aphextron 9y agoThe fact that Cassini is still out there doing groundbreaking science is just mind blowing to me. That thing launched when I was in middle school.
- cyberferret 9y agoI feel the same way about the Voyagers... Launched when I was in early primary school. Incredible to think that it will still be out there long after I am not around. I've always been fascinated by that project, and follow all news on it that I can, and was blown away recently to actually have a Twitter conversation with someone who did one of the voices on the 'Golden Record'.
- nappy-doo 9y agoHaynes (the publisher who does car DIY books) did a book on the Voyager probes, and it's a fun non-intro book. It gives a broad overview of the engineering in the probes, some problems with their construction, etc. Overall I enjoyed the read.
- julienchastang 9y agoFor those interested in this topic, I recommend "Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction" by David Catling. Catling details nine celestial bodies in the solar system that could potentially harbor life, and discusses Enceladus is some detail.
- ende 9y agoALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.
- Sharlin 9y agoA good way to distinguish those who have read 2010-the-book from those who have seen 2010-the-movie...
- gonvaled 9y ago“able to support life“ ... as we know it. The universe being so vast and so diverse, most life forms will probably escape our comprehension: completely different chemistry, environments (pressures, temperatures), time scales, state of matter (plasma based life forms?), or even energy based ones. We are not even looking for such different life forms, since we have already concluded that: - life must be water based - life must be carbon based - life must be based on dna (or simillar) Which leads (given our limited knowledge of the chemistry of these substances) to the conclussion that life must be extremely similar to Earth's. I see a lack of imagination here.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoI'm not sure that's fair. Researchers would be absolutely captivated to discover life forms that were drastically different from anything we've encountered. At the moment though, there's no clear understanding of how such life might form or what it could look like – and there are reasons to think that new life forms might be quite similar to known life forms. After all, we know at a high level what makes matter-based-carbon-water-life-forms work! It's a bit silly to try looking for something when we don't know what it looks like. Instead we can say with reasonable certainty that "life can evolve in this way, and we have evidence" – and look for life like that.
- gonvaled 9y agoMy point is that there are vastly more environments different than Earth, than similar ones. And that while having proof that water based life forms are possible, we do not yet know how common they are. Maybe water is, considered in astronomical terms, an hostile substrate for life.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoIt's really all just guessing, with only one data point. It may be that you're right, and alien life is all incomprehensibly weird in different ways. Or it may be turn out that only semi-Earth-like conditions can produce life, and it all looks rather familiar. Or it may be somewhere in between. I hope I live long enough to find out.
- troels 9y agoIf it turns out that there is no life there, maybe we should try to transplant some?
- dave_ant 9y agoIs there tectonics on that moon ? Isn't it too small for that ? The same goes for Europa... Is there real tectonics there ? If there is no tectonics in place and you have a "closed" big bucket of water constantly filled up with chemicals from hydrothermal vents during billions of years, wouldn't the water become completely soaked and kind of slimy ? Not the best place for life, even for extremophiles... I also found an interesting article on the probable high acidity of Europa ocean, that would make it not suitable for harboring life : http://www.space.com/14757-europa-moon-ocean-acidic.html http://www.space.com/14757-europa-moon-ocean-acidic.html I guess it could also apply to Enceladus ocean. Can someone elaborate on that ? P.S.: English is not my native language, sorry for any grammatical incoherence :)
- Symmetry 9y agoThe lack of techtonics on the Moon is a consequence of the Moon having cooled down throughout so it doesn't have a molten core anymore. With Europa we can actually observe plate techtonics in the continent sized ice sheets covering its surface and due to the evidence of activity we can infer that there must still be enough heat generated inside to keep things moving. Either the decay of radioisotopes inside or tidal flexing causing heat. Regarding acidity, life has to have some source of energy to get going and that's probably going to have to be a source of reactive chemicals.
- known 9y agoIf it supports life, why there is no life in that moon?
- rbanffy 9y agoThis makes Tethys and Rhea very tempting places for permanent occupation - they have abundant ice on the surface (easy to dig if you have a power source) and the delta-v's between them and the surface of Enceladus are between 1000 m/s and 3000 m/s, something chemical rockets can do easily.
- yomly 9y agoSo here's an orthogonal question. In a field like space navigation, where your findings come back after an expedition planned 5-10+ years ago how do you be "agile"? What is the go to project management style? Can we learn from these disciplines for alternative practices to building software?
- andrepd 9y agoOrthogonal? x) Why not "unrelated"?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kerbalspacepro 9y agoIt is related? The article is about space research, his question is about the management and organization of space research.
- lmm 9y agoWe can find alternative practices, sure. They'd likely be similar to early software development practices that were inspired by physical engineering practices. But they're going to be less effective. The whole point of agile is to arrange your practices around the short feedback loops that are uniquely possible with software and get the most possible value out of them.
- smdz 9y agoI always had this question - Can life exist outside our perception of biological life? Intelligent life might be an anomaly, and rare in the universe - but is it possible that life exists outside our perception of biology? Afterall everything is just rules and actions that lead to predictable reactions (unless quantum physics says something else) I look at artificial life - that exists in virtual environments. It looks like life - but we know it isn't for real. It cannot replicate/grow outside its environment. But that argument could be used to for all non-human life on Earth, if humans never existed. Even stuff like mars rover could be engineered to mine, manufacture and duplicate - eventually creating a colony of rovers that populate the planet and consume the planet's resources. Well, that might look like semi-intelligent life - but we know it isn't - or is it life?
- tcfunk 9y agoSomewhat related - I posed this question to my 4th grade science teacher. She was quick to shoot me down, and I'll never forget it.
- inetknght 9y agoThere are a lot of people who shoot down science questions. In my experience, my questions have frequently (!) yielded results different from the normal. Now, as an adult entering middle agedness, I think less of such people and actively disassociate myself from them.
- knightofmars 9y agoI'm not saying the following is what happened in your situation. As an anecdotal insight, I have friends who are K thru 8 school teachers teachers and they have to be extremely careful with this type of question. The reason is religion, specifically Christian religion. If they misstep and posit a view that contradicts a child's parent's religious views then they are, best case scenario, going to hear about it or, worst case scenario, going to have parents form a group whose sole purpose is ousting the teacher from the school. From my soap box, the religious self-policing, to me, is one of the more disconcerting aspects of the education system in the United States. As a personal observation, if a parent is worried that a single teacher providing an intentionally unbiased perspective on a philosophical topic is going to challenge a child's beliefs to the point where it overcomes a family's and church's indoctrination then it isn't the new perspective that's the problem. To this day I believe that "core curriculum" should include logic and philosophy with an emphasis greater than all other topics.
- mavhc 9y agoThe Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer ion collector has an open-source mode, confused me for a moment, they mean open ion source of course.
- SticksAndBreaks 9y agoCould we have a research station beneath the ice ?
- thezealot 9y agoOnly God can create life.