Is it Snowing Microbes on Enceladus? - NASA

[Skeptic Ginger]

Is it Snowing Microbes on Enceladus?

"More than 90 jets of all sizes near Enceladus's south pole are spraying water vapor, icy particles, and organic compounds all over the place," says Carolyn Porco, an award-winning planetary scientist and leader of the Imaging Science team for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. "Cassini has flown several times now through this spray and has tasted it. And we have found that aside from water and organic material, there is salt in the icy particles. The salinity is the same as that of Earth's oceans."
Rich geysers aren't the only auspicious thing about Enceladus. Thermal measurements have revealed temperatures as high as -120 deg Fahrenheit (190 Kelvin) emanating from some of these fissures.
"If you add up all the heat, 16 gigawatts of thermal energy are coming out of those cracks," says Porco.

She believes the small moon, with its sub-surface liquid sea, organics, and an energy source, may host the same type of life we find in similar environments on Earth.
"The kind of ecologies Enceladus might harbor could be like those deep within our own planet. Abundant heat and liquid water are found in Earth's subterranean volcanic rocks. Organisms in those rocks thrive on hydrogen (produced by reactions between liquid water and hot rocks) and available carbon dioxide and make methane, which gets recycled back into hydrogen. And it's all done entirely in the absence of sunlight or anything produced by sunlight."

Cool!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here's a bit more on the instruments that were on the craft:
Cassini to Make Closest Pass Yet over Enceladus South Pole

The closest approach, at an altitude of about 46 miles (74 kilometers), will occur around 11:30 a.m. PDT (2:30 p.m. EDT) on March 27.
This flyby is primarily designed for Cassini’s ion and neutral mass spectrometer, which will attempt to “taste” particles from the jets. Scientists using this spectrometer will utilize the data to learn more about the composition, density and variability of the plume. The Cassini plasma spectrometer, which team members worked to return to service so it could gather high-priority measurements during this flyby, will also be analyzing Saturn’s magnetic and plasma environment near Enceladus and sampling the plume material near closest approach.

 

[Corsair 115]

She believes the small moon, with its sub-surface liquid sea, organics, and an energy source...

But what would be the energy source in this case? Is Enceladus being heated up by gravitational flexing in the same way Io is around Jupiter? Or is it something else?

 

[Humanzee]

Indeed, I hadn't realized how small Enceladus is, only a 500km diameter. An uneducated guess would be tidal forces would be predominate in the warming. I'll need to read more. Thanks Skeptic Ginger for these posts.

 

[Humanzee]

(well of course I am wrong) Interesting, if oldish, paper

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/wisdom/meyerwisdom1.pdf

 

[LarianLeQuella]

Cool!

Very!