Water, water everywhere?
| June 25, 2009 | 6:58 PM
More journal entries from Cindy House »
Water jets spew into space from Saturn's moon Enceladus. Photo by NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
In June, one CU team announced that it had found shorelines from an ancient lake on Mars — proof of a body of water about the size of Lake Champlain. Although the water has long since evaporated, the lake bed — and what’s left behind in the sediment — may be a prime target for future missions to the Red Planet.
Another CU team published a study of water jets spewing into space from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This study and a companion study were trying to determine the origin of these jets, which are composed of water vapor and ice. The companion study found a key marine ingredient — salt — in the ice, supporting the idea that the jets are geysers from an underground ocean. However, the CU team, which studied the water vapor, didn’t find any salt. No doubt there’ll be further study to try to resolve the differences and find out what exactly is under the moon’s surface.
Water, as we know from our very own Earth, is the perfect place for biological life to gain a toehold. On Mars, the sediment in that lake bed may have preserved the remains of organisms that lived billions of years ago. On Enceladus, an ocean could harbor the building blocks of life, or even creatures that rival the ones in our planet’s depths.
Granted, we’re still a long way from declaring We Are Not Alone, but extraterrestrial life, even if it’s only one-celled, seems more possible all the time.
Read more at space.com and nationalgeographic.com.
astronomy, enceladus, mars, university of colorado, water
