They’re over the moon about the discovery.
Scientists have discovered fresh signs that Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, could potentially house alien life deep within its subterranean seas, per a groundbreaking new study in the journal Nature Astronomy.
A team from the University of Stuttgart in Germany came upon this alleged extraterrestrial evidence by analyzing tiny grains of ice that are being spouted into space through cracks in Enceladus’ desolate-seeming surface. Using decades-old data gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, the researchers discovered that the ice granules harbored complex molecules that suggest that Saturn’s sixth-largest moon could “tick all the boxes” for harboring life.
“There are many possible pathways from the organic molecules we found in the Cassini data to potentially biologically relevant compounds, which enhances the likelihood that the moon is habitable,” said astrobiologist Nozair Khawaja, who led the research, ScienceAlert reported.
With an average temperature of -330 degrees Fahrenheit, Saturn’s icy satellite might seem inhospitable. But in 2005, scientists discovered a large ocean trapped underneath its frozen exterior, as evidenced by plumes of water shooting up through fissures in the planet’s South Pole.
And while Cassini had flown through Saturn’s rings and collected multiple ice grain samples with its Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) instrument, many were hundreds of years old, so scientists couldn’t be sure whether they’d been tainted by space radiation, ABC News reported.
Then, in 2008, Cassini flew straight through this intergalactic geyser spray at 40,000 mph (64,800 kph), much faster than the old ones, providing a clearer picture of the chemicals.
“At lower impact speeds, the ice shatters, and the signal from clusters of water molecules can hide the signal from certain organic molecules,” Khawaja explained. “But when the ice grains hit CDA fast, water molecules don’t cluster, and we have a chance to see these previously hidden signals.”
The team then used cutting-edge techniques to pinpoint those signals, revealing freshly-ejected chemicals from the moon’s interior, including aromatics, ethers (pleasant-smelling colorless volatile liquids), as well as traces of nitrogen-oxygen compounds and elements that hadn’t been found before.
Their presence indicated that the previously discovered material on the rings originated from Enceladus’ interior and not through reactions with interstellar radiation.
When coupled with prior Cassini finds of salts, hydrogen, and phosphates, this means five of the essential elements for life had been detected, with sulfur entailing the only one left to find.
“We are confident that these molecules originate from the subsurface ocean of Enceladus, enhancing its habitability potential,” Khawaja said in an email, per ABC.
And while these compounds aren’t derived from biological processes, the team believes they’re precursors that are part of a chain of chemical reactions that result in life. The results indicate another environment on Earth that’s proven to harbor organisms — deep-ocean hydrothermal systems — which produce many of the same chemicals that were found during the Cassini missions.
If the ringed planet’s lunar oceans harbor similar environments, this raises the tantalizing possibility of life on Saturn.
“Having a variety of organic compounds on an extraterrestrial water world is simply phenomenal,” gushed Khawaja. “There is much more in the data that we are currently exploring, so we are looking forward to finding out more in the near future.”
The European Space Agency is currently planning a mission to land on Enceladus decades from now while NASA has already dispatched a spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa, another compelling potential environment for the building blocks of life.