Alien Lifeforms In The Plumes Of Enceladus?

In the Solar System, surprises never seem to end. This goes to show how little we really know of what’s going on out there. Spectacular images of Enceladus have been beamed back to Earth by Cassini-Huygens, a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ISA, which is equipped with an array of powerful instruments and cameras.

Enceladus has got what it takes for life to exist. In fact the ingredients are all there - water, warmth, and organic chemicals.


Shown in this false-color image, ice geysers erupt on Enceladus. The icy plumes were discovered by instruments on the Cassini Spacecraft during close encounters with Enceladus in November of 2005.
Eight source locations for these geysers have now been identified along substantial surface fractures in the moon's south polar region.
Courtesy: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI/JPL/ ESA/NASA


’Tiger stripes’ on Enceladus. New high-resolution heat maps of the South Pole by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer show that the stripes are giant fissures that are the source of the geysers.
Courtesy: Geology.com

NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby on March 12. Scientists are stunned that this tiny moon is so active, "hot" and teeming with water vapor and organic chemicals.

"Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life," said Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water, but Enceladus is only whetting our appetites for more."

The Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer saw a much higher density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected. This dramatic increase in density was evident as the spacecraft flew over the area of the plumes.

Another view of the mystery moon, Encaladus. The hi res 5mb ver is linked below:


False-color view that includes images taken at wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared portion of the spectrum. Images in the false-color mosaic range in resolution from 350 to 67 meters (1,148 to 220 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 61,300 to 11,100 kilometers (38,090 to 6,897 miles) from Enceladus.
Courtesy: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.


Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. The greatly enhanced and colorized image shows the enormous extent of the fainter, larger-scale component of the plume. Imaging scientists believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water.
Courtesy: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The first step toward answering the question of whether life exists on Enceladus is to analyze the organic compounds in the plume and Cassini's March 12 passage through it provided some measurements that have helped move toward an answer whether there is life out there.

Cassini is scheduled for another fly-by sometime in Aug next. Will it find the evidence of alien lifeforms in the plumes of Enceladus? I guess we would need to wait a little longer for another dedicated mission to bring back the plume material for lab testing to prove it one way or the other.

And what if we find there really is life out there? I hope we do! I’m keeping my fingers crossed! But would this greatest discovery be kept hidden from the public? Time will tell!

Cheers!


www.dailygalaxy.com...
solarsystem.nasa.gov...
geology.com...
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...




[edit on 12-12-2008 by mikesingh]

nice find.

wow the last weeks the evidence of some kind of life keeps getting bigger and bigger. when will there be an official ''We Found Them''?

Originally posted by GondelleX
nice find.

wow the last weeks the evidence of some kind of life keeps getting bigger and bigger. when will there be an official ''We Found Them''?

Yep! one day?

Most planets in our solar system are not what we percieve them as, or should I say what we have been brain washed to think they are like.

Thanks to MikeSingh and Also Mars Anomaly Research.

Awesome find! Will read up a bit more about it and hopefully give you some more information about it!

Very interesting! Star and flagged... I will be watching this thread
To think that we are the only life in our universe (a universe of many!) is insane. Billions of stars, there should be at least a million planets or moons that can hold life or just the building blocks of life such as water or oxygen.

Originally posted by justjoemusic
Billions of stars, there should be at least a million planets or moons that can hold life or just the building blocks of life such as water or oxygen.

Hi jjm! But you must remember that how and what we generally look at is within our scientific paradigms. There is a very great possibility that life elsewhere has a biology that's radically different from our own!

For example, people have speculated that silicon, a primary component of sand and a close cousin to carbon, could form the basis of an extraterrestrial biology. Alien life might forgo sunlight and depend instead on the geothermal energy in hydrogen and sulfur compounds emitted from the planet's interior, much like the deep-sea vent ecosystems here on Earth. Or maybe the chemistry of alien life will be utterly different and unimaginable.

And that's most likely to be the case. So are we barking up the wrong tree?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-Shakespeare.

Cheers!


science.nasa.gov...

I've been reading the article on this in a recent issue of Scientific American. Its really facinating and it made me realize this...

While the discovery of life off our own planet gets much lip service of how profound it will be, our efforts to find such life are not in scale to the stated level of revelation.

Basically those who are in charge to spend money on projects to find life off Earth are not in any big hurry to do so.

I wonder why...

Originally posted by GondelleX
nice find.

wow the last weeks the evidence of some kind of life keeps getting bigger and bigger. when will there be an official ''We Found Them''?

You are absolutely right, they are letting everybody read and hear and see these stories all of a sudden, all at once.

Something big is coming.

It must not be good.