Liquid water on Saturn moon could support life

[binTravkin]

Cassini spacecraft sees signs of geysers on icy Enceladus

Scientists have found evidence that cold, Yellowstone-like geysers of water are issuing from a moon of Saturn called Enceladus, apparently fueled by liquid reservoirs that may lie just tens of yards beneath the moon's icy surface.

The surprising discovery, detailed in Friday's issue of the journal Science, could shoot Enceladus to the top of the list in the search for life elsewhere in our solar system. Scientists described it as the most important discovery in planetary science in a quarter-century.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11736311/

[Spec]

Water can support life??!

Spec.

[binTravkin]

Water + heat + carbon + some other crucial elements = yes, can support life.

Ahh, there's also that precondition of radiation shield, but I think it could be present there.

[Lorizael]

Could tens of yards of ice provide a decent radiation shield?

[binTravkin]

Im not sure, but seeing how many organisms manage to survive in quite high radiation levels and also the fact that we don't know how thick actually is the ice and whether there are some sort of caverns in solid mineral below that ice, it could be just enough.

[reds4ever]

Different moon but....

[binTravkin]

Wow, they say that radiation danger only exists in the very surface?
Means that several yards should serve the problem completely.

[Robert]

It's really starting to get funny, all those newspapers that jump on every "water may be found on....." press releases.

NASA talks about the posibility of water, the "we wanna see aliens" crowd thinks about life immediately.
So far we haven't even ourselves been unable to create life out of water.

Get real people, we will never find ET life.

[Lorizael]

Humans hae been living on the Earth for thousands of years and we occupy every corner of the planet. Despite this, we discover many new species of life every single year. What makes you think that with the exceedinly tiny bit of actual data we have on the rest of the universe, you can possibly say there's no other life?

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by CyberShy


Get real people, we will never find ET life.

I'd put money on the fact there is some form of ET life in our solar system.

[alva]

Get real people, we will never find ET life.

Why not? I think we will eventually, it's just a matter of time.

[Seeker]

That's a very broad statement. I'm sure that we'll find some simple 'pre-biotic' type "organisms"...maybe similar to newly discovered 'Mimi', the giant, bacteria-sized virus believed to be a survival from the 'RNA' world....

[Spec]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Water + heat + carbon + some other crucial elements = yes, can support life.

I was being sarcastic.

Spec.

[Guynemer]

What always bothers me about these articles is the presumption that water (or carbon, for that matter) is specifically needed for life. Just because that is how life on Earth works doesn't mean that is the only possibility.

Life as we know it on Enceladus or Europa, yes. But other modes of life could be anywhere, really. Hard to say all life in the universe requires an Earth-like chemical environment, based on an "N" of 1.

[germanos]

Originally posted by Guynemer
What always bothers me about these articles is the presumption that water (or carbon, for that matter) is specifically needed for life. Just because that is how life on Earth works doesn't mean that is the only possibility.

Life as we know it on Enceladus or Europa, yes. But other modes of life could be anywhere, really. Hard to say all life in the universe requires an Earth-like chemical environment, based on an "N" of 1.

It's not that silly though.
The earth environment has plenty of space and opportunity to allow for life without water or life that would be none-carbon-based.
Still, any such thing is non-existant...
(with the possible exemption of virii)