We’ve been searching for life in the universe beyond Earth for a long time. There are three clues that astronomers and astrobiologists have been chasing: water, energy, and organic compounds. Why? Well, the thinking goes: if these three conditions allowed life to emerge on our planet, perhaps they could do the same elsewhere in the cosmos. And it seems that this theory is right, because in NASA’s latest discovery, we were able to find water outside the universe, which is being ejected at 800 mph in the Solar System.
A mysterious jet of water in the Universe
Since 2005, NASA’s Cassini probe has been orbiting a planet in our solar system. The goal has always been to collect data on its particularities, until during one of its orbits, it captured something unexpected: gigantic jets of water vapor, simple organic compounds, and silica being ejected into space at an impressive speed of 800 miles per hour, which is approximately 400 m/s.
Do you know which planet we’re talking about? It’s Saturn. And these jets, or plumes as they’re also being called, are emerging from cracks in the ice covering the moon’s surface and, as a result, they launch material from the deep interior directly into space. Around the planet, this material ends up feeding Saturn’s E ring.
However, some of these fragments end up escaping and becoming available for direct study by space probes. In addition to this discovery being very exciting, some questions have arisen about this unusual behavior: Where does this water come from? And most importantly: what else can it contain?
Saturn’s moon that brings us many surprises
To try to unravel these doubts, scientists have deepened their investigations and have already revealed the true stage of this activity: Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth-largest moon. This moon is only 500 km in diameter (more or less 1/7 the size of our Moon, where we also recently discovered an ocean). However, despite being small, Enceladus is extraordinary. This is because its surface is composed of pure ice and reflects up to 90% of sunlight, making it the brightest body in the entire solar system.
However, it is what lies beneath the ice that impresses us. This is because some evidence points to a global underground ocean, which is kept in a liquid state by tidal forces caused by the gravitational interaction with Saturn and the neighboring moon Dione. In other words, it is this internal heating that allows water to leak through fissures known as “tiger stripes”, especially at the moon’s south pole.
And better yet: more than just water, these plumes carry carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, salts, and silica, all elements that, here on Earth, are linked to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the oceans, the places where we believe life first emerged. Well, perhaps Enceladus has emerged as one of the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth.
Will we be able to bring this material for study here on Earth?
However, like everything in life, every historic discovery comes with some challenges. And this time, the question is: when these plumes are launched into space at such high speeds, will the organic compounds survive the impact with probes that try to collect them? That’s when researchers from the University of California, San Diego, created an experiment to answer this question.
Using a unique piece of equipment, they accelerated ice grains containing amino acids to speeds similar to those of the plumes of Enceladus and then proved that these compounds essential to life survive the impact without fragmenting completely. In other words, probes like Cassini can capture biosignatures directly from space. Who knows, we may see more space probes working, just like Voyager 1, which was recently resurrected by NASA.
