NASA: Saturn’s Tiny Moon Enceladus Has Liquid Ocean, Ingredients For Life

Are we alone in the universe? What about in our own solar system? Turns out there’s one more place life could have developed in our solar system: the liquid water oceans of Enceladus.

Enceladus is the sixth largest moon orbiting around Saturn. Nevertheless, it is a tiny world, with a diameter of just 310 miles. For comparison, the Earth’s moon is about 2,158 miles in diameter. Like Jupiter’s Europa, Enceladus is covered with a thick sheet of ice.

Enceladus is more than just a frozen rock. According to the Los Angeles Times, NASA researchers have discovered concrete evidence of a liquid water ocean with “warm spots” in a study featured in Nature. Observers first hypothesized there was liquid water when the Cassini spacecraft detected plumes of what appeared to be salty water erupting from the surface.

The plumes served as evidence of hydrothermal activity, which is only found on one other location, Earth.

Likewise, a gravitational study suggested that under about 30 to 40 kilometers of ice, there was a regional liquid ocean around the Southern Pole.

According to a NASA release, extensive data gathered from the Cassini spacecraft cosmic dust analyzer (CDA) instrument also showed there were tiny grains in the salty solution coming from the surface. The scientists believe hot water dissolved the tiny grains from the moon’s rocky interior. The temperatures needed to dissolve the particles away would need to be at least 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius).

University of Colorado researcher Sean Hsu explained, “these hydrothermal activities will provide the basic activities to sustain life: the water, the energy source and of course the nutrients that water can leach from the rocks.”

The scientists’ new findings greatly increase the chances that Enceladus is home to microbial life, as explained by John Grunsfeld of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

“These findings add to the possibility that Enceladus, which contains a subsurface ocean and displays remarkable geologic activity, could contain environments suitable for living organisms. The locations in our solar system where extreme environments occur in which life might exist may bring us closer to answering the question: are we alone in the Universe.”

So how can Enceladus, which receives very little energy or warmth from the distant Sun, be hot enough for geysers?

The Los Angeles Times reports that the most likely heat source is tidal force from Saturn. As the moon moves along its orbit the gravity from the gas giant kneads the alien world, which creates friction, which then creates heat.

The hydrothermal activity alone isn’t enough sustain life, even though it means liquid water and an energy source.

Although Cassini will go through Enceladus’ water plumes again later this year, the only way to know for sure if there’s life in the tiny moon’s liquid ocean is to actually land there, and that won’t be for a long time.