Cassini Finds Evidence of Water 167
CheshireCatCO writes "Scientists working on the Cassini Mission think that they have found compelling evidence for the existence of liquid water at the south pole of the moon Enceladus. In addition to the obvious puzzles relating to how temperatures can be held high enough for liquid water, the presence of water, as well as the detection of organic molecules, opens up the possibility for life at Enceladus's south polar region. The findings are to appear in the 10 March issue of the journal, Science"
Business Plan: (Score:5, Funny)
2. Bottle the icy-cold water
3. Ship bottles to Earth
4. Sell "Enceladus Springs" at outrageous prices
5. (Need I say more?)
Re:Business Plan: (Score:3, Funny)
6. Get modded down for a tired joke.
Re:Business Plan: (Score:4, Funny)
This is Slashdot, tired jokes get modded up !
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, YOU JOKE ABOUT MODDED TIRES!
OH RLY!? (Score:2)
Re:Business Plan: (Score:2)
Re:Business Plan: (Score:2)
But it says "Natural" on the label! It must be good to consume!
Re:Business Plan: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Business Plan: (Score:2)
Speaking of which, where the heck did the term "organic" come from as it relates to food!?!?
Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:4, Funny)
Are yours except
Europa
Attempt no
Landing there
Use them together
Use them in peace
Re:Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:1)
Re:Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:1)
Re:Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:5, Informative)
Clarke's 2010(+) novels follow the cinematic version and keep them visiting Jupiter.
Re:Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your dead on about Iapetus though, when the first images where sent back from Voyager 1 showing the moon exactly as Clarke had described it, right down to the black dot (in the book its the Monolith)in the middle Carl Sagan promptly sent a copy of the image to Clarke with the
Re:Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:5, Funny)
> Are yours except
> Europa
> Attempt no
> Landing there
> Use them together
> Use them in peace
All these world
Are belong to you
Except Enceladus
Move no Zig there
For great justice
And because it will get wet
Re:Arthur C Clarke says ... (Score:2)
Are hard to survive
Terraform Enceladus
Nukes are the answer
Somebody set up us the bomb
Sort of like on Mars
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
Saturn (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I know a *true geek* such as typically is found on /. will know this without looking it up, but for those afraid to ask...
Re:Saturn (Score:5, Informative)
Well, we didn't even need to get the name of the mood, we *all* know where the Casini probe is and what it's doing...
Re:Saturn (Score:2)
Yes, it's on its way to Titan [nasa.gov].
Re:Saturn (Score:4, Informative)
A true geek might not be expected to know all the moons of the Solar System - I confess I would have had only a 50% chance of getting Enceladus right - but he would certainly be expected to know that the Cassini spacecraft is in orbit around Saturn. Has been for about five years, IIRC. Thus we are unlikely to hear reports of major discoveries made by Cassini about moons of Jupiter, or perhaps of Neptune.
Re:Saturn (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens [wikipedia.org]
Re:Saturn (Score:4, Interesting)
When they named Enceladus, the moon was considered incapable of sustaining volcanic activity, but maybe the name changed all that!
Re:Saturn (Score:2)
Re: Io
H2O? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:H2O? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:H2O? (Score:2)
(is that even possible?)
Don't light a match.
Re:H2O? (Score:2)
Re:H2O? (Score:3)
Judging by current replies to this post as well as its moderation (+2 Interesting), am I the only one that has my mind in the gutter? I have to believe that the OP was trying to be at least a little suggestive...
Maybe . . . (Score:3, Funny)
It's oil. Now we can get our petrol without having to rely on those unstable sources like Canada.
Re:H2O? (Score:2)
Re:H2O? (Score:5, Informative)
You can read spectrums as patterns of light absorbtion bands as well as light emission bands
Pardon me... (Score:2, Funny)
That is some cold water (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a closer look, but it would be interesting to gather some samples of this water and see if it contains microorganisms of any kind.
Re:That is some cold water (Score:5, Interesting)
So, do we sit back, millions of miles away, speculating as to whether life exists there, or endanger the life we seek to discover by "getting a closer look" to see if it exists? Quite a conundrum, isn't it?
Re:That is some cold water (Score:3, Insightful)
But why not just do something similar to the Mars rovers? Have a self-contained laboratory that can do all the necessary analysis there. It'd probably be a lot cheaper than trying to retrieve a sample and return it here, and you wouldn't have to worry about contamination, etc.
Re:That is some cold water (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if all you had to care about was contaminating the sample you took, what's the big worry? The worry is that microorganisms are incredibly resistant and could survive the trip from Earth to the moon. In fact, there are whole theories about earth being seeded by microorganisms from an asteroid although I consider those pretty far out. But it doesn't get any better by the fact that a) it's coming from a place we know is full of microorganisms, b) space probes travel much shorter, c) land more gentle, d) need radiation shielding and livable operating temperatures. You can read more here [wikipedia.org] about how hard these bastards are to kill. Sending a probe there would be almost as much a medical task (sterilization, contaminant detection, seals) as space travel.
Re:That is some cold water (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, sending a self-contained labratory to do experiments there on the moon's surface is sending a probe to the surface of a far-flung moon for remote experimentation, which was the first option mentioned in the snippet you quoted.
Also, note that this in no way removes the chance of contamination, it probably increases the chance. Even though these probes are assembled in clean rooms and every attempt is made NOT to contaminate the probe prior to flight, it's impossible to make sure that the probe is 100% free of earthborn life. Airborne viruses might get caught inside the probe, and could wreak havoc on the alien biology, for instance. Other posts here illustrate the problems of microorganisms, but the problem isn't necessarily that our microbes could taint their microbes; the very probe itself could very well contaminate the moon on its own. Remember, the probe very likely would NOT be chemically inert; it could poison the water that it touches. A probe sitting on the surface of a planet for all eternity will degrade and erode. Obviously this is purely hypothetical, but imagine that part of this probe was lead. If a chunk of lead fell into our drinking water, we'd suffer consequences and eventually succumb to lead poisoning. Lead is poisonous to us to some degree, and we can't be overexposed to it. Well, what is poisonous to extraterrestial life that we're investigating? How do we make sure that there's nothing we leave on that planet that damages the ecosystem?
Alternatively, let's assume that we can send a probe which is totally inert and nonthreatening to the moon's environment. We have the possibility of creating something akin to a artificial reef [wikipedia.org], as life grows around the probe and becomes dependent on it. Are we trying to seed life, encourage life, or study life? Where do we cross the line between letting life grow as it may and interfering with its evolution?
Re:That is some cold water (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, given Enceladus' location, there should be a lot of exposure to metallic meteorites including more lead and other heavy metals than you could possibly cram on a probe.
Re:That is some cold water (Score:2)
It's not sidestepping the issue. I'm realistically pointing out that it makes little sense to angst over a small amount of non-living foreign material when the system gets far more from natural sources. Introducing living organisms is completely different.
Are we to keep this u
I don't see a big problem.... (Score:2)
Re:That is some cold water (Score:3, Insightful)
Accomplishing any of the above would be pretty remarkable, and a success.
Re:That is some cold water (Score:2)
You don't have to wor
Re:That is some cold water (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That is some cold water (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, part of the beauty of this discovery is that we wouldn't necessarily have to do that, because it seems that the geyser system on Enceladus is shooting liquid water (and whatever it contains) all around the Saturn system. From a piece of commentary by James Oberg on Why the Enceladus discover [msn.com]
a really close flyby (Score:2)
Actually, the new altitude for that flyby will be 25 km. Boo Yah!
slashdotted already? (Score:5, Funny)
Did you all purposely do this?
Re:slashdotted already? (Score:1)
Re:slashdotted already? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:slashdotted already? (Score:2)
Did you all purposely do this?
Isn't it common knowledge that
Re:slashdotted already? (Score:2)
Blame Drudge (Score:2)
Re:Blame Drudge (Score:2)
But we knew that he is an asshat, so this hardly tells us anything we didn't know.
Re:Blame Drudge (Score:2)
PS: I expected to see Carolyn Porco or at least some NASA PR flack on NASA TV at 11am PST with this. Instead they were just running some grainy archival stuff that looked circa Gemini. disappointing.
Re:Blame Drudge (Score:2)
And, no, I didn't expect Drudge to behave. I didn't expect him to care about this story at all, to the extent that I thought about him. (Which is "not at all.") Still, one wonders if there isn't some action that can be taken for breaking a news embargo.
Depends on who you are... (Score:2)
Less powerful organizations can simply refuse to pass on any more embargoed stories to the individual who breaks the embargo; it's a judgement call as to whether that's going to be worthwhil
Re:Depends on who you are... (Score:2)
Send a rover on over. (Score:1)
Wonder what is causing the warm temps.
That's no moon... (Score:5, Funny)
Ob Simpsons Reply (Score:1)
Re:Ob Simpsons Reply (Score:2)
Yeah, sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Make allusion to possibility of life emerging there
3) ???
4) Grant Funding!
I'm as much a fan of discovery as the next scientifically minded person, but this has become a little tired in recent years. Every time a possible discovery of liquid water creeps up, the potential for life always follows in the very next paragraph if not the next sentence. One would wonder what would happen if we found a vast reservoir of liquid water but no life in it. I imagine some segment of astrobiology would be so incredulous as to insist on probing it until an earth born microbe manages to survive the trip and contaminate the discovery.
When I was first reading this I thought "Wow, wouldn't it be interesting to figure out how liquid water could have existed there." Then came the inevitable "hey, maybe there's life there!" I just gave up. The conditions for liquid water are remarkable enough, do we need to include the outrageously small probability of life developing before we've looked at the more answerable questions like "where's the heat coming from?"
Re:Yeah, sure... or How I Love Grants (Score:4, Interesting)
2) Make allusion to possibility of life emerging there
3) ???
4) Grant Funding!
Well, the avian-human transmission of influenza was actually discovered by a research scientist who wanted an excuse to go surfing in Australia, so he proposed a grant to study if seabirds were a reservoir for influenza that infects humans.
Turns out they were. Plus, he got some good surf in.
So, maybe we should investigate the surfing potential of this moon, and maybe we'll discover a cure for cancer
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mentioned the possiblity of life only because of the detection of organic molecules. Frankly, I think that the odds of life are quite slim, but this discovery *does* add Enceladus to a rather short list of good places to look. Even if there is no life, we can learn a lot about the abiotic formation of organics and probably put some better constraints on the conditions under which life might develop. So I'm not saying that there is life or that we should expect to find any, merely that this makes Enceladus an interesting place for astrobiologists.
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that's just the POINT, isn't it?
I mean, right now we have liquid water on one planet, where life developed. Statistical correlation of 1.0 (great!) over a sample size of 1 (not so great).
Neither you, nor I, nor Carl Sagan, nor all the scientists at NASA knows/knew whether the 'probability of life' is large, small, or somewhere in between. What we're talking about though is DOUBLING our sample size which is a pretty big
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's two-fold.
Everyone has always acted like water in the universe was scarce and Earth had some special circumstances that allowed liquid water to exist.
Also, damned near any conditions where we can find water on Earth, there will be sort sort of life hanging about in the form of one extrem
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
That belief has always puzzled me.
Let's see now; H is the most common element in the universe, and the current estimates for other elements [jlab.org] have O in third place. So H and O atoms stand a very good chance of meeting each other nearly everywhere, to form HO. HO in turn is highly likely to bump into another H after a short trajectory. There's also a good possibility of
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:2)
And I wouldn't ever im
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:2)
Water is pretty common in the universe, but LIQUID water is scarce.
Earth is the only body in the solar system that can have liquid water on the surface.
Re:Yeah, sure... (Score:2)
You can upgrade your karma to "Mexcellent," sir or madam!
Further Link (Score:5, Informative)
We're still talking very cold temperatures (Score:4, Informative)
So, don't expect to see exotic creatures swimming about. It might end up being a great place to mine for water, however, supporting future colonies of Saturn. The moon has virtually no gravity, so you could practically throw it off the surface (well, not really - the escape velocity is 212 m/s).
Re:We're still talking very cold temperatures (Score:2)
That said, if the finding here is right, the water reachs around 270 K. W
We're also talking volcanic activity. (Score:2)
The moon is only the third other body in the Solar System - Earth, Jupiter's moon Io and possibly Neptune's moon Triton are the others - known to have active volcanic processes, researchers said.
Volcanoes are hot and provide energy.
Energy and water are two very important things life needs to survive. This puts Enceladus towards the top of the list of places where life may also exist in our solar system.
Threat to humans? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Threat to humans? (Score:2)
Even if we did return a sample for Saturn, planetary protection protocols are (supposed to be) pretty strict. So I wouldn't lose sleep over it, especially since any organisms on Enceladus are probably not suited for life on Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Threat to humans? (Score:2)
Re:Threat to humans? Or Is Paranoia Contagious? (Score:2)
You mean might be WMDs. Or Oil.
Re:Threat to humans? Or Is Paranoia Contagious? (Score:2)
WMD stands for Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's already plural, there is no need to put an 's' on the end. In doing so, you have effectively said Weapons of Mass Destructions.
Let's use some logic (Score:3, Funny)
Bwahahaha! (Score:2, Funny)
I will have the first wave of gas staions, drive-throughs, and Starbucks on the spacelanes and secure a monopoly all for myself!
Bwahahaha! Monopoly! I feel like Bill Gates...
Only the souther half is water?.... (Score:2)
BTM
enchiladas! (Score:2)
Blame it on BUSH! (Score:2)
We'll soon have evidence of life on Enceladus... (Score:2)
Re:Predictable rabble (Score:2)
Re:Predictable rabble (Score:4, Insightful)
The news: The most simple and common combination of two extremely common elements might have been noticed on a large rock, very far away.
Like most astronomy news, it's incredibly boring unless you let your imagination run wild and start dreaming about colonies, alien life, or other flights of fancy... so it's no surprise that most of the
Re:Predictable rabble (Score:3, Interesting)
The most simple and common combination of two extremely common elements might exist on a large rock, very far away, in a form that shouldn't be possible based on our current understanding of the conditions there.
You might not find that to be interesting, and may even be in the majority, but for people who are interested in that field, possibly finding something completely unexpected (not the water part, but the liquid state) is pretty interesting.
Am I suggesting that people l
Supercooled water (Score:1)
Neat page w/video [f0rked.com]
I've heard of water as cold as -40C.
Re:Supercooled water (Score:2, Insightful)
JRjr
Re:Supercooled water (Score:3, Interesting)
Anything that seeds the crystallization will do - an ice crystal works best, but particles or shock will do.
I had a bottle of cider camping (I don't know the temperature, but my kerosene froze) that stayed liquid until I opened it. Spiderwebs of ice forming inside, quite beautiful, followed by the crack of the bottle breaking.
Re:Supercooled water (Score:2)
Re:Really dumb question... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I don't like to complain but.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I don't like to complain but.. (Score:2)
Re:Is this Heavy Water? (Score:2)
And I assume you're joking about the denser air? Enceladus's surface is a vacuum.
Re:Is this Heavy Water? (Score:2)
Re:Same old news with a new press release and a (! (Score:5, Informative)
The new measurements suggest that there too much water vapor in the plume to be warm ice and it almost has to be liquid water.
Also, there is no detection of ammonia so far.
Re:Neptune (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Neptune (Score:2)