Another of Saturn's Moons Shown To Have Oceans — and Possibly Extraterrestrial Life

the only reason the NASA & Cassini scientists are putting out the possibility of organic life
is because of the chance discovery of whole ecosystems that thrive in the deep ocean 'smokers' which are thermal vents from magma heated water & dirt that is superheated and composed mostly of sulfuric acid/hydrogen sulfide

these life forms utilize the acid environment as their energy source...instead of the Sun which the surface dwellers utilize

if not for those thermal vents in the totally blackened ocean floor...microbes & such on several of the Saturn moons would be considered impossible as recent as the late 1977, i think


RE: Hydrothermal vent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
Jump to Black smokers and white smokers‎: Black smoker hydrothermal vent.ogg ...
Black smokers were first discovered in 1977 on the East...





now . if the moon accreted mass as time went on then, 100s of millions of years of frozen ice & dust would have just sat there in orbit around the planet..

the potential thermal vents could only have begun when the moon had enough mass & frozen water-ice to start the cycle of tidal friction from the host planet...the moon then could develop a residual thin layer of liquid water that was trapped under hundreds of meters of solid ice.

no wonder the water-ice jets are so extreme when they find a fault or fracture to break through the moons surface



one might come to a conclusion that the tidal friction thaws a 10 meter band of water ice on the rockey core of the moon...then ejects the pressurized liquid water in a 'snap shot' in time...the ejected water crystalizes into ice and falls to the moon surface... while the whole moons ice sheet collapses so that the melting ince and high pressure ejection cycles begins anew.

bet the water jets are always at the moons axis poles---as jets from any other place would likely cause erratic spin or alter the orbit of the moon

what about luptus one of the other moons of saturn .google up moon with a view or what did arthur know & when did we know it .you really trust nasa to tell & show you anything read moongate by will l brian lol

reply to post by jonnywhite


Yes, it is really strange looking......I wish there were pics showing it's true luminosity.

reply to post by St Udio

Excellent post! Here's an article that talks about more.....

Like gently squeezing a rubber ball slightly deforms its shape, the fluctuating gravitational tug on Enceladus causes it to flex slightly. The flexing, called gravitational tidal forcing, generates heat from friction deep within Enceladus.

source: www.saturndaily.com...

reply to post by St Udio


By studying the way the surface of Enceladus flexes and moves under the tidal stresses of Saturn it has been recently hypothesized that there must indeed be a subsurface ocean and not mere pockets of trapped water.

here

The microorganisms that could have evolved in the hypothetical ocean of liquid salt water under Enceladus' icy crust, and have been swept away by the water spouting through the crevasses in the ice, would be extremely unlikely to survive; they would explode at the surface, and all that would remain are the organic compounds whose existence was verified by the Cassini spacecraft.

The researchers on this collaborative project wish to analyse the rising water jets by taking samples while the water is still in a liquid state for this reason. To accomplish this, German engineers have already devised the initial concept for a technical solution; from a base station on the surface of Enceladus, an ice drill probe [The IceMole] would be inserted into the ice crust to a depth of 100 to 200 metres, melting its way through the ice to a water-bearing crevasse. At this point, the probe will be able to obtain a sample of the liquid water and examine it in situ for the presence of microorganisms.

Enceladus Explorer Project

reply to post by iforget


Thanks for that link....this is getting really interesting! If a life form were there, it would be microbial, but even so, it would prove life can and does exist elsewhere...so who knows what could be in other solar systems?

reply to post by StealthyKat


And if there is no microbial life in an ocean at Enceladus or Europa that would be to me just as astounding. I dont think that we could ever prove ourselves alone in the Universe yet we could learn some idea of how rare and special the life all around is.

Originally posted by StealthyKat
I wish I would have found THESE pics for my OP....these are actual pics Cassini took during the flyby....incredible!

Totally awesome pictures and great post OP. Can you provide the links to the images?

Life probably does exist on some of Saturn's and Jupiter's moons and NASA probably has known for quite sometime, hence why we have paid more attention to Mars than most any other moon/planet in our solar system other than our own. What would NASA have left after such a discovery of biological/mammal life were to be made on one of these moons/planers? So far, they have stopped short, just barely, of saying "hey we found life." Instead it's always a teaser. Yeah funding has been cut, but they don't have the space shuttles anymore...that's billions of dollars to be spent right there. Regardless a great post and these pics remind me of looking into dirty snow on earth.

life exists elsewhere and they will have to admit it soon enough.....look at mercury,just found out that it has ice when every theroy ruled against it......the more they discover the more things have to be rewritten,what we understand and believe down here doesn,t mean that its fact,its what we,ve cum to believe but is now getting proved otherwise.

reply to post by sparky31


I agree with that, the apparent harsh barrenness of both Mars and Venus was a shock to many and did much to stymie the belief that life must be fairly common. Since then the finding of chemosynthetic ecosystems here on Earth and Kepler's discovery of many extrasolar planetary systems has helped to turn the trend back towards a general belief that life is likely to be widespread.

I do believe though that the early exploration of both Mars and Venus was done with the understated expectation of finding life and that the scientists involved would have gleefully revealed such had they done so.

oh i know if they had found life then it wud have been brodcast but all these jupiter moons now that have been shown to have heat and more than likely liquid water then look at the deepest places on earth where they have filmed life.......it shows in the same conditions whitch r there that some form of life probably exists.

it looks like Hoth.

when I look at space images like this I can't help but have a star wars mentality
we're at THAT stage of our evolution in a galactic existance.

any life would microbial until we find an earthlike planet, and we don't know if they are scarce or not with nothing to compare it to.

Great thread, backed hard. Can't wait to see what further research finds

reply to post by yourmaker


i,m sorry but this earth like planet thing pees me off,why does it have 2 be an earth like planet?cause what we,ve been told is life will only exist on that?no it won,t.....life will exist to what ever situation it has to adapt too and even here on earth life exists in places that they never thot it wud so they can,t then cum out with that life here or there is impossible when even here on earth they are still being proved wrong.

This has to be the most awesome thing I've seen all week.

Originally posted by sparky31
reply to post by yourmaker

 

i,m sorry but this earth like planet thing pees me off,why does it have 2 be an earth like planet?cause what we,ve been told is life will only exist on that?no it won,t.....life will exist to what ever situation it has to adapt too and even here on earth life exists in places that they never thot it wud so they can,t then cum out with that life here or there is impossible when even here on earth they are still being proved wrong.

it's not what we've been told, it's the obvious blueprint for life to adapt to the point we have.
until proven otherwise, we have to assume that most lifeforms in the universe would follow the same process of creation we did and that includes solar system make-up.

reply to post by StealthyKat

Or maybe orbital booster rockets or thrusters .

reply to post by sparky31


No one said it was *earth like" Sparky. They compared the faultlines on it to the San Andreas fault on Earth just because of the way it is, for reference. It is nothing like Earth....but it may have the ability to support microbial life, due to the water and heat of the water etc.

reply to post by Violater1


It is funny looking, like it is a giant ice spaceship blasting off!

reply to post by yourmaker


That's right.....when Earth was in it's early stages, we could not have survived in that environment! It was very different.....it's a process.