Looking for life on Enceladus: What questions should we ask?
Does life exist beyond Earth? One of the most compelling places to consider this possibility is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn with a liquid water ocean encased in a frozen shell. There, plumes of water spray from ice fractures into space, and spacecraft observations of these geysers suggest that Enceladus has all the chemical building blocks necessary for life.
Scientists are still working out the exact steps that led to life on Earth, given that there aren’t well-preserved records from before life originated. However, icy ocean worlds like Enceladus could hold a wealth of new clues about how life begins to get off the ground—or doesn’t.
Therefore, instead of simply asking whether Enceladus is inhabited, the researchers propose asking, “What is the extent of organic chemical evolution in Enceladus’s ocean?”
Structuring missions in this way, the researchers say, is a lower-risk strategy that could provide high-reward insights into life in the universe.
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