ALIEN WORLD
NASA reveals Saturn’s moon Enceladus has perfect conditions for alien life to thrive thanks to discovery of hydrogen gas
Discovery could mean strange lifeforms exists on planet's moon
A ROBOTIC space probe has discovered that conditions are ideal for alien life to thrive on a moon in the outer Solar System, Nasa revealed last night.
Its robotic Cassini spacecraft has made several dives through geysers spouting salty water from the south polar region of one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus.
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Cassini’s instruments tasted the spray erupting from cracks in the surface ice on Enceladus and discovered the presence of molecular hydrogen.
Scientists say the only plausible source of this hydrogen is a hydrothermal chemical reaction caused by water in an underground ocean rubbing against hot rocks.
They also found some carbon dioxide.
The two ingredients are important for a process called methanogenesis that allows microbial life to be found deep in Earth’s own oceans.
Enceladus’s 20-mile deep subterranean sea is believed to extend right the way around the moon, just below its icy crust. Saturn lies around 900 million miles from the Sun, so is far beyond what is generally regarded the habitable zone.
But despite being in the frozen outer part of the Solar System, the ocean of water on Enceladus is kept a warm liquid because of the churning caused by giant planet Saturn’s gravitational pull.
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Nasa scientists say the reaction caused by the water rubbing against the rocks has a similar effect to that seen deep in our own oceans where, despite the absence of sunlight, living microbes can be found thriving around hydrothermal vents in the rocks.
They say that the chemistry going on in Enceladus’ underground ocean makes the environment a potentially habitable one. That is not the same as saying it is inhabited, but the possibility is an exciting one.
UFO expert Nick Pope said: "This is really exciting news.
"It's not the big announcement some people expected or hoped for, confirming that we've found alien life, but it edges us ever closer.
"I suspect there's life on Europa and Enceladus, and that it's only a matter of time before we find it.
"This could be microbial life but it could be something bigger, more like fish, squid, clams, or perhaps some variety of marine life totally unlike anything on Earth."
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Other moons orbiting the outer planets have also been found to have underground oceans. Last year, the Hubble space telescope detected geysers similar to those on Enceladus erupting from one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa.
NASA is planning to launch a mission in 2022, called Europa Clipper, to orbit and land on Europa to discover whether it might be home to alien life.
Europa’s underground sea, discovered by NASA’s Galileo probe in the 1990s, may be more than 60 miles deep, and hold twice as much water as all the Earth’s seas put together.
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