Enceladus - Space Pod 07/28/15

This week, I'm talking about Enceladus! I love Enceladus! Enceladus is awesome! Enceladus, if you didn't know, is a tiny moon of Saturn. In fact, it's so tiny, it's only around 500 kilometers in diameter or so. But what makes Enceladus really cool is that it hosts a subsurface ocean sandwiched between ice and its rocky core. No offense to all the other celestial bodies that I love in our solar system, but to me, Enceladus is the most beautiful object in our solar system. Its icy surface makes it the most reflective surface in the entire solar system. If that wasn't enough, it has these beautiful plumes of icy vapors and icy materials that are erupting from its south pole. These plumes were captured by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005, so we've actually only known of them for about 10 years or so, which in space-time terms is actually really short. But these erupting icy plumes are not just beautiful, they're actually also quite utilitarian. They contain organic carbon and nitrogen, which could be really useful for life. What also makes Enceladus so incredibly beautiful is it has these amazing tiger stripes across its surface. And these tiger stripes actually correspond with the 101 geysers that have been discovered coming out from Enceladus. These tiger stripes also correspond with increased heat readings. So the increased heat readings in the geysers actually lead people to believe right now that there actually might be hydrothermal vents on Enceladus, which is incredibly cool. And again, incredibly useful for life, because life actually wouldn't be able to get much sunlight being buried underneath all those layers of ice. And so it would need to get energy from somewhere, and it could actually get energy from those hydrothermal vents. Quite useful. While detecting life anywhere in the solar system is going to be an amazing life-altering event if and when it happens anywhere in the solar system, detecting life on Enceladus actually comes with a few added perks. One of these perks is if we were able to actually discover life on Enceladus, it has a higher probability of being completely separately created from Earth. Earth and other planets exchange materials throughout time, and actually because Saturn is so far away from Earth, Earth actually exchanges less materials with Saturn. In fact, there's a six-time less probability of Earth exchanging materials with Saturn than it is with exchanging with Jupiter. Because of this, if we were able to detect life on Enceladus, there is that much higher probability that the life was created completely separate of Earth. Essentially we'd be discovering a second genesis of life. Just thinking about that as a possibility is amazing. Discovering a second genesis of life would have a profound effect on understanding life as we know it. Some people, though, are critical of the ability for us to find life on Enceladus. Some people think that because the oceans haven't been around long enough that we might not be able to find life in those oceans. But other researchers have rightfully pointed out that we don't really understand enough about what it takes for life to evolve anywhere, no less even on Earth, to really be able to make assumptions about how much time is critically needed for life to emerge. Other people are critical of the pH balance of the oceans on Enceladus. The pH is estimated to be between 11 or 12. This is very similar, actually, to subglacial lakes in Antarctica or to Mono Lake in California. And despite Mono Lake having the same pH balance as approximately on Enceladus, actually we're able to discover briny shrimp and microbes and all these other little tiny forms of life in it. So it's awesome to see forms of life here on Earth existing in similar extreme environments that exist on Enceladus. What's even more exciting is that we know more about Enceladus now than we do about a lot of other moons. And because of this, we have a better idea of how life could actually exist on Enceladus. So I would love to see spacecrafts being developed in the future, or hopefully even right now, that really try and tackle how we could detect life on Enceladus. Or perhaps do a sample return of the plumes that it's spitting out in order to be able to better understand how we could detect life on Enceladus. That's all from me this week. I hope you enjoyed. Remember to subscribe on YouTube, leave a comment, and remember to donate to the Patreon campaign to support space pods like this one.