Signs of water on one of Saturn's moons

[Diana]

The Cassini spacecraft has spotted what appeared to be water geysers on one of Saturn's moons (Enceladus).


The suprising images from the moon represent some of the most dramatic evidence yet that water in liquid form may be present beyond the Earth..

High-definition pictures beamed back from the probe showed huge plumes of ice coming from the moon's south pole.
"We're inferring that there is a liquid water reservoir under the surface and it's erupting in a geyser-like fashion, maybe like the Yellowstone geysers you would see," said Linda Spilker

More Info.



Diana

[Diana]

More interesting info.


Water on Saturns moon could support life...

"Living organisms require liquid water and organic materials, and we know we have both on Enceladus now," she said. "The plumes through which Cassini flew last July contain methane, contain CO2, propane — they contain several organic materials."

HERE


Diana

[sunofsky]

infact this is a great news, and now no worries for the people of the earth to fight with the water scarcity in the future,lot of water is there in the universe.

sunil

[_DRAGONMASTER_]

heres an image

[Diana]

Nice image .........

[sunofsky]

what about oxygen abundance?

I don't think there is much free oxygen on Enceladus. Not to worry though, as Earthly life existed for a long time before becoming dependent on oxygen, and it's unlikely that any given extraterrestrial ecosystem would contain such a reactive substance.

Anaerobic (is that the correct word?) bacteriae are known to exist pretty well and I'm quite sure we could find some of those elsewhere in the universe or even Solar system. By the way, science fiction writers (who sometimes really do get some things right before scientists do) have speculations on methane-breathing species, so why not have some of them creatures in Titan or any other sattelite in Solar system?

[Dragon Star]

Originally Posted by umop ap!sdn

I don't think there is much free oxygen on Enceladus. Not to worry though, as Earthly life existed for a long time before becoming dependent on oxygen, and it's unlikely that any given extraterrestrial ecosystem would contain such a reactive substance.

Life can often be much more though then we give it credit for, take the Water Bear for instance, it can actually survive the vacuum of space, live without water for a hundred years or more, and can stand radiation thousands of times more violent then a human can. And it is from the same planet that you and I are from. Now that's cool.

Oh I agree (and yeah water bears, or tardigrades, are neat little creatures ) in fact ISTR reading about bacteria that live in nuclear reactors.