Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, stands out among the celestial bodies orbiting the sun. Its surface, covered in thick ice, reflects almost all the sunlight that reaches it, giving it a radiant white and opaque appearance. However, beneath this still exterior lies a remarkable secret: a liquid ocean revealed by geysers erupting from cracks in its frozen surface at the south pole.
Scientists have dedicated years to studying Enceladus and its watery plume, seeking to unravel the mysteries of the hidden ocean. Recently, they made an exciting announcement based on the analysis of data collected by a spacecraft as it traversed particles from Enceladus’s frozen spray. For the first time ever, they found evidence of phosphorus in the tiny samples of the ocean floating freely in space.
Now, you might wonder what’s so fascinating about phosphorus, silently whispering to avoid disturbing the excited scientists. Truthfully, many of us probably haven’t given this element much thought since our chemistry classes. However, the discovery of phosphorus in Enceladus’s plume, and consequently in its subsurface ocean, is truly groundbreaking. Phosphorus is one of the six essential elements for life on Earth, playing a crucial role in cellular membranes and DNA. Remarkably, previous research had already found evidence of the other five essential elements in the vapor emanating from Enceladus. Hence, we can now definitively affirm that this small moon, situated just a few planets away, possesses a habitable ocean.
It’s important to note that a habitable ocean doesn’t necessarily indicate the presence of life. This discovery does not prove the existence of alien organisms. However, it does mark the first detection of phosphorus in an extraterrestrial ocean, representing a world of possibilities.
Most of our knowledge about Enceladus stems from the NASA spacecraft Cassini, which spent 13 years orbiting Saturn. Cassini ventured through the icy particles emitted by Enceladus, some of which settled into Saturn’s orbit, contributing to the formation of the planet’s glittering rings. In 2017, as Cassini’s fuel depleted, NASA intentionally directed the spacecraft towards Saturn’s atmosphere, causing it to disintegrate. Nevertheless, the mission had gathered an abundance of data that continues to occupy scientists’ attention.
Phosphorus, being one of the fundamental building blocks of life, proved quite challenging to detect. However, when researchers scrutinized the Cassini data, they discovered it embedded within the minuscule grains of Saturn’s outermost rings as sodium phosphate. This phosphorus likely originates from the depths of Enceladus, resulting from chemical interactions between seawater and a mineral known as apatite. Apatite is Earth’s principal component in teeth and bones. The characteristic of these minerals is that they are not very soluble. Therefore, when you drink a glass of water or swim at the beach, your teeth don’t dissolve. However, Enceladus’s ocean contains a high concentration of the chemical compound we recognize as baking soda. This solution aids the dissolution of apatite, releasing phosphorus into the water.
If life exists on Enceladus, Morgan Cable, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hypothesizes that it might resemble the organisms thriving around Earth’s hydrothermal vents, where sunlight cannot reach. These vents harbor diverse communities comprising microbes, crabs, tube worms, and perhaps even octopuses. Thus, we can imagine the possibility of a colony of Enceladus crabs or even shrimp residing beneath the icy surface. Speculation aside, the combination of elements now known to exist on Enceladus makes the existence of such life theoretically feasible.
Glein and his team suggest that Enceladus’s subsurface ocean potentially possesses a phosphorus concentration a hundred times higher than that of Earth’s oceans, exceeding the requirements for a thriving community. However, an excessive abundance of phosphorus could signify a disappointing scenario. If life forms were indeed present, scientists might expect them to consume a significant amount of the phosphorus, leaving only trace amounts behind. To illustrate, Cable offers the example of leaving a pizza untouched on a college campus, indicating the absence of life. Nonetheless, Cable remains hopeful, suggesting that life on Enceladus might still be in its early stages, with minimal influence on the ocean’s chemistry.
Cable asserts that studying Enceladus and other frozen ocean worlds like Jupiter’s moon Europa or even Pluto could bring us closer to answering profound existential questions. If we gather all the ingredients for life, mix them together, and wait, will life emerge? Or is life an exceedingly rare occurrence, confined solely to Earth, leaving us dishearteningly alone? It is profoundly hoped that the latter is not the case.
I share in this hope. Perhaps, beneath Enceladus’s bright surface, in the depths of its dark sea, a tranquil ecosystem of microorganisms thrives, nourished by a chemical soup. These tiny aliens would be blissfully unaware of our existence and our ardent pursuit to prove our interconnectedness. Yet, they would carry on, navigating their world with the same purpose as the smallest beings do on our planet.
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