This was big huge news, because it means there’s probably liquid water there on the surface of Enceladus, and wherever we find liquid water on Earth, we find life – no matter how cold, hot, radioactive, acidic, or deep underground.
Well, a new paper published in the December 15, 2006 issue of the journal Science is proposing an alternative viewpoint for the plumes. The problem is that the plumes contain 10% carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and methane. These chemicals shouldn’t be able to mix with water at the low pressures on Enceladus.
The researchers are proposing that there are reservoirs of clathrates underneath Enceladus’ southern poles. These are an ice phase of nitrogen and methane that can be much colder than liquid water. The plume of material is erupting from these clathrates, spewing nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide and chunks of water ice into space. So there wouldn’t be pools of liquid water, and dashing hopes for life.
Few space images are as iconic as those of the Horsehead Nebula. Its shape makes…
It stands to reason that stars formed from the same cloud of material will have…
We go about our daily lives sheltered under an invisible magnetic field generated deep inside…
When the first stars in the Universe formed, the only material available was primordial hydrogen…
On 9 January 2024, the Einstein probe was launched, its mission to study the night…
Anyone familiar with astronomy will know that galaxies come in a fairly limited range of…