Web Desk(June 2018): Last year, astronomers announced that ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus may be the best chance for finding life outside of Earth in our solar system. Now, the discovery of complex organic molecules in plumes that rise from Enceladus’ subsurface ocean further suggests that the moon could support life as we know it.
Before NASA’s Cassini mission studied Saturn and its moons for 13 years, beginning in 2004, Enceladus held many secrets. Cassini revealed that there was a global ocean between the moon’s icy crust and its rocky core.
Although the Cassini mission ended in a blaze of glory in September when it disintegrated in Saturn’s atmosphere, surprises from the data it collected will be released for years to come. A study detailing the latest discovery from Cassini data was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“We are, yet again, blown away by Enceladus,” study co-author Christopher Glein, a Southwest Research Institute space scientist specializing in extraterrestrial chemical oceanography, said in a statement.
“Previously we’d only identified the simplest organic molecules containing a few carbon atoms, but even that was very intriguing. Now we’ve found organic molecules with masses above 200 atomic mass units. That’s over ten times heavier than methane.
With complex organic molecules emanating from its liquid water ocean, this moon is the only body besides Earth known to simultaneously satisfy all of the basic requirements for life as we know it.”
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