Hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, propylene, ethane, propene. There's bacteria that live off acetylene (though surely abiotic processes too). I suspect this indica

Hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, propylene, ethane, propene. There's bacteria that live off acetylene (though surely abiotic processes too). I suspect this indicates plenty of energy and complex chemistry on Enceladus. Some of those compounds are energetic while others (I think?) are combustion bi-products. Otherwise, I wonder when/if we'll ever see oxygen (O2) confirmed in a study like this? I realize it's highly/easily bound up in reactions, but what a finding that'd be. They list a probability of 0.64 (aka 64%) chance of O2 here. Imagining a surface of water ice and near vacuum atmosphere, I suspect any free oxygen would be very difficult to detect. But they also see co2 so maybe any oxygen is quickly used up? source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02160-0.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02160-0.epdf