Saturn's Moons: Spacecraft Finds Evidence of a Frozen Saltwater Ocean

reply to post by Nicolas Flamel

Maybe if we don't start a new war for a couple of months we could afford this space mission.

BEST QUOTE EVER M8!!!

Lets see how our solar system is shaping up...

Earth: 100% certainty of life (as defined by its inhabitants)

Mars: Maybe...

Various moons in the outer solar system: Maybe...

We are left with one "for sure" and lots of tantalizing "maybes". The trick question is "Is our solar system the norm?".

That seems hard to say at this point as no other solar system we have studied is quite like ours. Planets in them, yes, that seems common, but the same planet size distribution, distance from their sun as ours? not really.

The more we learn about other solar systems the more I believe that there is something unusual in the deep past of our formation.

Anyway I hope we have a definative answer to life in our own solar system someday, would be nice if it was in the next 20 years or so.

I for one welcome our new Enceladean brine shrimp overlords.

How long before they are able to build flying saucers and come for a visit?

Mars has no life on it. It does not possess water in liquid form, and that's a necessary condition for life as we know it.

Of course, I am talking about life as we know it. Whether it has other kinds of lifeforms with a different phisiology, it is everybody's guess. I still say no, though, but I can't prove, merely because it is very hard to live without water.

Now, I've been wondering. What will happen if they drill there, look into everything, and find absolutely zero presence of lifeforms?

Originally posted by NormalcyBias
If they make an announcement like that then I personally believe we should be looking in the exact opposite direction of Saturn. They are looking to get all those eyes in the sky pointed at Saturn while something probably truly unbelievable and remarkable is happening in the other direction.

Maybe it is true and that would be wonderful if they could really get some good scientific research done and shed some light on the subject at hand.

Bit of a jump to conclusion but I am definitely not going to refute the possibility.
Personally I'd say that it was more likely just another step on the slow road to full disclosure.

Interesting indeed. It wouldn't surprise me that there are other life sustaining celestial bodies out there in our own solar system. I figured as much when they tried to pass off the Saturn's moon Titan was a huge ball of liquid methane. Judging from the photos I saw, Titan looks like a mirror image of Earth, with oceans and land masses. It had been mentioned on TV documentaries that the universe is full of water (frozen in debris). Saturn emits 2.5 times the energy it recieves from the sun, so it certainly has potential of perpetuating life. Good post!

Originally posted by metro

Originally posted by SonOfTheLawOfOne
Look at the Earth...

Even in the most inhospitable places, life emerges and constantly surprises us all.

Sigh.. this is always brought up as some sort of 'proof' that life must exist everywhere. Sorry, but life exists in those places on earth because it had a chance to slowly migrate to those areas and adapt. Life just didn't pop up in 1000oC waters.

So unless somewhere on these planets there are temperatures to support life as we know it, it does not and will not happen, period.

The moons of Saturn are at least as old as Earth's moon, which is as old as the Solar system. Do you think life wouldn't have had the same amount of time on any other rock to adapt the same way life did on our planet?

Good find, Misoir.

/TOA

reply to post by Misoir



Thinking about how life on earth has been the direct result of water, makes one wonder what possible life forms could be found in alien oceans.

It also makes me instantly think about how so many UFO sightings are either over a body of water, near a body of water, or my personal favorite....entering and exiting bodies of water...

Original article published in Nature

Originally posted by wantsome
Now all we have to do is drill some holes and send some camera's down. Seriously it can't be that hard I'm frickin dying to find out.

I ice fish and drill through the ice on lakes all the time. I don't care if the ice is 10 miles I'm sure NASA could figure out something.

I suppose you just volunteered for the mission

I always followed the news about the moons of gas giants in the Solar system and how they can be home to life forms, with reasonable probability. Think of all the money we could have spent on that mission instead of that Iraq misadventure.

Originally posted by XtraTL
I for one welcome our new Enceladean brine shrimp overlords.

How long before they are able to build flying saucers and come for a visit?

NOW THATS HILARIOUS......
A few million years? yeah we got time.

reply to post by metro


Actualy its now belived that the first life to emerge on earth evolved around hydrothermal vents
on the ocean floor, under tremendous pressure and heat.
royalsociety.org...
The early earth at the time life was emerging also went through a period known as the late heavy bombardment, the most extreme event our planet has ever suffered. Where asteroids
of 200km-300km regularly struck the surface vapourizing the atmosphere and ocean and
opening up fissures the size of continents. But life 'microbes' still held on and survived. through
snowball earth 'where the whole planet literaly feezes solid' to huge volcanism and impacts,
until after many millions of years when the worse of it was over, it began to flourish and evolve
into ever more complex plants and animals.
www.livescience.com...

Originally posted by Leahn
Mars has no life on it. It does not possess water in liquid form, and that's a necessary condition for life as we know it.

Of course, I am talking about life as we know it. Whether it has other kinds of lifeforms with a different phisiology, it is everybody's guess. I still say no, though, but I can't prove, merely because it is very hard to live without water.

Now, I've been wondering. What will happen if they drill there, look into everything, and find absolutely zero presence of lifeforms?

It is quite possible that it did at one time, support life. The polar caps are only a small part of the equation as there are what appear to be dry river beds all over the surface along with suggestions of long melted glacial flows. Many scientists theorize that it once had an environment which was destroyed, possibly by solar event. A strike to the planet from a vast CME would have blown the atmosphere right off the planet like a puff of smoke. Recently, lander samples hinted that there was fossilized microbial life there, but I imagine if they found anything larger than a parasite on Mars, they would go to great lengths to cover it up. Finding life on any other planet besides our own would completely wreck the geopolitical academian agenda. We can't go handing out hope and knowledge to the masses now, can we?

Originally posted by isthisreallife
reply to post by don rumsfeld

 

Your article said the Orbiter was delayed until 2010, is there any update on whether it was launched or not? I didn't see it in the news or on their website, but I have not looked in a while.

Those icy moons have always interested me. The possibility of life, especially on Europa, is not only possible, but is almost probable if it is in fact liquid water underneath that ice.

I feel like those moons should be a higher priority than Mars at this point.

I haven't heard anything new about the probe. I've tried looking for the article I read
a couple years ago about the high amounts of radiation & trying to navigate through
the forces around Jupiter. Apparently, when a signal is sent to the probe the delay
is like 15 minutes (correct me if I'm wrong) & in that time the probe could easily be lost.
Also, the radiation levels are so high that the on-board computers would fry in a matter of minutes.
So, maybe a re-think is under way??

reply to post by don rumsfeld


One of the main problems isn't the radiation, it's being able to carry or generate enough power to enter a lunar orbit of a gas giant, one reason nobody has except for our moon. It's much easier to decelerate into a large asteroid orbit without the presence of a gas giant nearby, and with a couple of space probe asteroid visits soon by NASA and the ESA, should provide much of the necessary dynamics involved in attaining an orbit around a relatively small body.

The Cassini mission ultimate end is still not decided, a collision into the Saturnian atmosphere (like the Galileo Jovian atmospheric probe), or maybe a crash on Titan, or maybe a slingshot into deeper space, they want to see what the power reserves are and mission duration possibilities before deciding, but that's like 7 years away.

BTW, it took life on earth about 2.8 billion years to evolve from a single live cell to the lofty top of the food chain earthworm, a billion years ago.

Originally posted by SavedOne

Originally posted by SonOfTheLawOfOne
You can burn, flood, rip, annihilate an area on this planet, and life will still find it's way back. It has always proven to be true.

With just this simple, and very real truth, why is it so hard to believe that life can exist almost anywhere in the universe? Is it such a presumption to then say with the right time, sentient life could exist almost anywhere as well?

The inverse could also be asked, since life finds a way to exist in the most inhospitable of places on earth, why have we found no evidence of it at all elsewhere? It should be in places we've already looked, and it isn't.

because i care to share.........

have a good one!

Originally posted by OuttaTime

Originally posted by Leahn
Mars has no life on it. It does not possess water in liquid form, and that's a necessary condition for life as we know it.

It is quite possible that it did at one time, support life. (...) Recently, lander samples hinted that there was fossilized microbial life there, but I imagine if they found anything larger than a parasite on Mars, they would go to great lengths to cover it up. Finding life on any other planet besides our own would completely wreck the geopolitical academian agenda. We can't go handing out hope and knowledge to the masses now, can we?

Well, when we move from "hinting" to "evidence", we talk. While it is true that Mars could have quite possible had life on it at one time, we have no evidence of this. Only hints. I will wait for the results of the sample analysis.

It's really amazing that all these spacecraft are out patrolling and science-ing all these Moons and planets in the solar system, and , lo and behold, they're finding all the stuff that Arthur C. Clarke told us was already there years and years ago! But, I'm glad we're out there exploring the neighborhood. You never know who your gonna meet walking down the street each day!