Saturn moon Enceladus may have water

[Hadley Delta]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/sp ... ater_x.htm

The Cassini spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral in 1997, captured evidence of the geysers during a fly-by of the moon Enceladus late last year.

The team of scientists studying the images and data from the nuclear-powered spaceship speculate in Thursday's edition of the journal Science that the geysers may be liquid water gushing from a sort of subsurface volcano beneath the otherwise frozen moon. Enceladus' surface appears to be made purely of water ice. The presence of liquid water would dramatically change scientists' understanding of what places in our solar system could support life.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion, that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said in a written statement.

"However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms," said Porco, of the Space Science Institute in Colorado.

Until now, scientists had proof such activity took place in only three places in the solar system: Earth, Jupiter's moon Io and Neptune's moon Triton

[Another Les]

I was just about to post on the same subject:
"Geysers on one of Saturn's Moons"
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11736311/

Also, Uranus, which rotates on it's side, has two new rings:
www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/ ... 51223.html

[Hadley Delta]

Nova on PBS Tuesday night is about the Cassini/Huygens probe to Saturn and Titan.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/titan/about.html

[Hadley Delta]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/titan-life-methane-speculation-100607.html

...hydrogen was flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Astrobiologist Chris McKay at NASA Ames Research Center speculated this could be a tantalizing hint that hydrogen is getting consumed by life.

"It's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said.

Another study investigating hydrocarbons on Titan's surface found a lack of acetylene, a compound that could be consumed as food by life that relies on liquid methane instead of liquid water to live.

"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth," McKay said.

However, NASA scientists caution that aliens might not be involved at all. "Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," said Mark Allen, principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute Titan team. "We have a lot of work to do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical process, without biology, can explain these results."

"Both results are still preliminary," McKay told SPACE.com.

To date, methane-based life forms are only speculative, with McKay proposing a set of conditions necessary for these kinds of organisms on Titan in 2005. Scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere, although there are liquid-water-based microbes on Earth that thrive on methane or produce it as a waste product.