Remove ads

NASA announcement: molecular hydrogen detected in Enceladus geysers

xa na xa

xa na xa

A.E.I.O.U. - Antarticae est imperare orbi universo
Location
σ Octantis
Article:
[...]
The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope.

In the papers, Cassini scientists announce that a form of chemical energy that life can feed on appears to exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus, and Hubble researchers report additional evidence of plumes erupting from Jupiter's moon Europa.

"This is the closest we've come, so far, to identifying a place with some of the ingredients needed for a habitable environment," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. "These results demonstrate the interconnected nature of NASA's science missions that are getting us closer to answering whether we are indeed alone or not."
[...]



Article:
[...]
But team members traced that signal to water vapor dissociating as it slammed into the instrument's titanium walls at more than 17 kilometers per second. For this latest work, published in the journal Science, the team managed to feed plume material to Cassini's spectrometer at slower speeds without it touching the walls, ruling out alternate production sources and allowing any hydrogen emitted from the moon's ocean to be seen. What they found shocked them: hydrogen constituted one to two percent of the plumes—more than enough to serve as a source of free energy for microbial life.

"One or two percent doesn't sound like a lot to most people, but it really is—it's an amazing amount," says Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the University of Heidelberg who studies Enceladus's plumes but was not involved in the new work. "Molecular hydrogen is hardly found on Earth at all because it's so light and volatile—it is eaten by bugs or reacts with other substances or just floats away to space." Such a large amount, researchers believe, must be steadily replenished somewhere within the moon. On Earth, molecular hydrogen chiefly comes from lifeless processes, such as when hot water circulates through rocks rich with iron or organic molecules. This liberates the gas, which can flow out at seafloor hydrothermal vents to nourishes methanogenic bacteria that form the base of the food chain for light-starved ecosystems. On Enceladus, researchers believe, similar hydrothermal activity must be taking place.

"This free energy is really a game-changer for Enceladus," says lead author Hunter Waite, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in San Antonio, Tx. "The presence of molecular hydrogen shows there is the chemical potential there to support metabolic systems like methanogenic microbes. This suggests we've found a potential food source that would support the habitability of Enceladus's interior ocean."
[...]
 
xa na xa said:
"One or two percent doesn't sound like a lot to most people, but it really is—it's an amazing amount," says Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the University of Heidelberg who studies Enceladus's plumes but was not involved in the new work. "Molecular hydrogen is hardly found on Earth at all because it's so light and volatile—it is eaten by bugs or reacts with other substances or just floats away to space." Such a large amount, researchers believe, must be steadily replenished somewhere within the moon. On Earth, molecular hydrogen chiefly comes from lifeless processes, such as when hot water circulates through rocks rich with iron or organic molecules. This liberates the gas, which can flow out at seafloor hydrothermal vents to nourishes methanogenic bacteria that form the base of the food chain for light-starved ecosystems. On Enceladus, researchers believe, similar hydrothermal activity must be taking place.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I understand some of these words.
 
Isn't there also a theory floating around that Enceladus might be significantly younger than we first thought, meaning that life may not have had enough time to arise yet?
 
Its currently estimated that 130 million years after Earth formed the oceans formed, and 130 million years after that the first life was formed. That's a pretty quick timetable. If you assume that the oceans formed on Enceladus even quicker and that life arose even faster than estimated, it might be possible.

Of course that's before getting into the matter that the young Enceladus model is based off the assumption that the young moons (and Saturn's impressive ring) are a product of older moons colliding and being destroyed. If that's the case, its not impossible that you could have a case of panspermia, where some preserved bacteria in a stasis state from a deceased moon could have ended up in Enceladus and the ones lucky enough to end up next to a vent got rebooted. It'd be more plausible than "panspermia started life on Earth" theories as it'd all be in the same general orbit.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top