Reading News for You: - NASA has discovered a possible ocean on Saturn’s moon Enceladus — could that mean life?
Thursday, April 13, 2017
VietPress USA (13/4/2017): This is a new discovery from NASA's Cassini Spacecraft supposed that a form of chemical energy covered a large sea on Saturn that scientists believe a lie exist on this moon of our Solar system.
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NASA has discovered a possible ocean on Saturn’s moon Enceladus — could that mean life?
New findings from data collected by NASA's Cassini
spacecraft suggest that aliens could be living right here in our own solar
system.
OK, sure, they aren't the little green men we were hoping
for, but as NASA scientists announced, a "form of chemical energy that
life can feed on appears to exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus," meaning
teeny, tiny microbial life may be swimming around up there.
Additionally, Hubble researchers report they too have found
evidence of plumes of the material 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,"
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington, said in a statement. "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."
The researchers' findings, published in the journal Science,
indicate the presence of hydrogen gas on the 310-mile wide moon of Enceladus.
And as NASA so eloquently breaks down, "Life as we know it requires three
primary ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the
right chemical ingredients, primarily carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
phosphorus and sulfur."
The abundance of hydrogen, the scientists conferred in the
summary of their findings, suggests a "state of chemical disequilibria in
the Enceladus ocean." The disequilibria could represent the chemical energy source needed to support
life.
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| Saturn Moon |
However, Mary A. Voytek, head of NASA's astrobiology
program, made sure to keep all our theories grounded here on Earth, telling the
New York Times, "If there is biology there, it isn't very active."
Cassini, NASA said, was never designed to detect signs of
life, but rather to simply record data of Saturn. Cassini's almost 20-year
mission will soon come to a close as it is currently planned to be destroyed by
diving into the Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017.
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