Thread

Promising discoveries about the potential for life on one of Saturn’s icy moons

98 points · 74 comments · geox

Loading the complete thread in the background. This saved snapshot is available now. Refresh

jibal · 1790393885 · focus · HN ↗
> In fact, spacecrafts already in planning could be used to identify evidence of life there much easier than previously thought, should it exist.
But there's no reason to think that it does.
1. moron4hire · 1790468769 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
2. gmueckl · 1790468881 · focus · HN ↗
  Why not? Friction from total forces keeps the moon got enough to contain liquid water under its ice cover. This makes it similar to Europa in some ways.
3. Sharlin · 1790470443 · focus · HN ↗
  Oh, but there is. One reason is that life on Earth seems to have appeared almost immediately after the crust cooled enough and the primordial ocean formed.
4. jibal · 1790508003 · focus · HN ↗
  None of the responses actually provides a reason to think that life exists there.
  > So it seems the people whose job it is to study these things do have reason to think it might exist.
  "reason to think it might" is not at all the same as "reason to think it does". Basically it says that they don't think it's impossible. (The heading is "Could Life Really Exist on Enceladus?", and the experiment showed that the simulated environment didn't kill an existing microorganism. They acknowledge "that doesn’t mean that there is life on Saturn’s moon" and reiterate that if there is, they've shown that future space missions "might have a good chance of finding traces".)
  And people are making whacked out inferences, like the first utterly insane comment:
  > If life really exists there, it implies that life is everywhere in the universe. That was absolutely terrifying.
  Er, no, what implies that life is "everywhere" in the universe is the plain mechanics that make microorganic life on Enceladus plausible and the vast numbers ... it's not like the solar system is super special and rare; in the ~ 10^26 planets and moons in the observable universe (and why limit it to that? The actual number might be unbounded), there is certain to be a vast number that are similar, and a sizeable number of them will have some sort of microorganisms. Are such microorganisms terrifying? No remotely rational person would think so. Do they imply higher lifeforms that might be dangerous to us? Not at all ... surely such lifeforms do exist, again by the vastness of the numbers, but physics prevents any interaction with them.
  Detecting microorganisms on Enceladus won't change any of the probabilities ... it would effectively be neutral in a Bayesian calculation, swamped by the knowledge we already have. It would produce a cultural change, but many factors will mute even that. Even the increased motivation to explore will be swallowed up by the impending end of human civilization due to global warming.
5. troyvit · 1790524835 · focus · HN ↗
  Actually there's lots of evidence that there is life on (in?) Enceladus:
  <a href="https://sales.bigmachine.io/curious-moon" rel="nofollow">https://sales.bigmachine.io/curious-moon
  This book teaches how use PostgreSQL to crunch real data from the Cassini probe, which shows a "smoking gun" for life on Enceladus.
I_dream_of_Geni · 1790469671 · focus · HN ↗
OK... Serious question here: we find "life" (algae?) on one of Saturn's moons or one of Jupiter's moons. So, we spend ~$50 Billion (arguably much more) and find "life". So? Why is this important to people? There isn't one chance in (place your own word here) that we can do anything about it or even send humans there. Seriously want to know what people really think...
1. torben-friis · 1790470216 · focus · HN ↗
  >So? Why is this important to people?
  Because it could then tell us if it's related to us or not, potentially we could get to see how life unrelated to us looks like, how life in general is originally formed, how likely in the universe it is...
  I honestly struggle to imagine how it can be considered unimportant, unless your stating position is that said life is completely unreachable to current and future tech, which I don't find likely.
  1. I_dream_of_Geni · 1790470810 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe only possibly unimportant based upon the staggering costs involved. Is it really really worth that?? Is finding life worth $10 Trillion dollars?
    randochatter · 1790471677 · focus · HN ↗
    The $10 trillion will be spent regardless. Whether it's on luxury yachts, private islands, and political capital or health care, education, and exploring the solar system are choices.
    booty · 1790473426 · focus · HN ↗
    Strictly from an economic standpoint: The $10T goes right back into the economy. That's $10T worth of STEM jobs and manufacturing and so on. Arguably, it should be spent more directly on schools and universal healthcare and so on, but $10T also creates a lot of jobs and healthcare benefits and funds public schools and so on so it's a tricky comparison to make.
    From a non-economic standpoint: Aside from ensuring we don't destroy this planet, what is more important than finding out if we're alone in the universe? Not much, if you ask me.
    refactor_master · 1790476082 · focus · HN ↗
    Look up the staggering amount of everyday conveniences invented by space exploration. Theoretically the private market would’ve filled this gap, but in practice we know the market will never be willing to spend the first few trillions on foundational research.
    tombert · 1790477270 · focus · HN ↗
    I am all for space exploration, but just in the interest of fairness, I would be surprise if the innovations for the entirety of space exploration approaches even 10% of what the US military has developed.
2. dzink · 1790472330 · focus · HN ↗
  Because of statistics. If we can find life, potentially started independently or pollinated in a couple of planets close to each-other, then life is everywhere and we may be in a dark forest of intelligent or hidden native predatory beings waiting to wipe us out if we squeak or show up elsewhere. If it's not as frequent, then we can keep exploring to look for it and more human-habitable spots.
  1. rafram · 1790473325 · focus · HN ↗
    I have a premonition that even if extraterrestrial life is discovered, and even if intelligent, hostile extraterrestrial life is somehow discovered, humans are not going to leave it alone.
    After all, everyone involved can just say it's inevitable! If we don't do it, someone else will.
    lazyasciiart · 1790497960 · focus · HN ↗
    No, but you might explore differently once you know there are other people everywhere and they might be stronger than you.
    flyinglizard · 1790498027 · focus · HN ↗
    Having an external common enemy might do us good.
    LightBug1 · 1790505743 · focus · HN ↗
    In the movies.
    In reality the existential crisis will be used as a means for control, exploitation, and corruption ...
    c.f. USA, Israel, UAE as spring-to-mind obvious examples for hints and tips as to how this plays out.
    It's also interesting that your mind goes immediately to common enemy instead of some alternative.
    nkrisc · 1790507002 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s the same, lame, self-fulfilling excuse that gets used for every bad thing someone does dressed up as a necessary thing.
    You can see it right now with AI barreling forward. If we don’t develop it, someone else will, so we will ensuring it happens.
    Of course we can never prove or disprove their claim of “someone else will” because they went ahead and did it.
    trimethylpurine · 1790524127 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    nico · 1790527057 · focus · HN ↗
    In the case of weapons development, it's not about whether someone will do it or not. It's about whether that is a good reason/excuse to then do it yourself
    So, if someone else is going to develop something very harmful, is the best solution to develop something equally or more harmful? Or are there maybe other better solutions to this problem?
    trimethylpurine · 1790528628 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    trimethylpurine · 1790536631 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    rsynnott · 1790543409 · focus · HN ↗
    Huh? There have been lots of extremely nasty things which there has been implicit or explicit international agreement not to develop and/or deploy, and this has largely held. Weaponised nerve agents, most biological weapons, salted nuclear weapons, extremely large nuclear weapons...
    trimethylpurine · 1790551542 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    nkrisc · 1790548596 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m well aware of why people do it, that doesn’t change my feelings about it or my opinion of it.
    Developing the more heinous weapons before the other guy is the pragmatic thing to do, but it doesn’t give you the moral high ground.
    trimethylpurine · 1790629484 · focus · HN ↗
    So, honest question, that being the case, is the best solution to let them gain superiority, exercise revolution at the cost of millions of lives, and then hope they don't kill you and your countrymen?
    I think making seemingly moral short term decisions that result in maximum casualties is not actually moral. It's stupid, and wrong.
    Creating an arms race by letting someone who isn't the current leader gain an advantage ensures that a power struggle will ensue. It implies revolution in all known cases in history.
    The moral high ground you're referring to should result in the best outcome. It doesn't arise from a guy standing at the top of a hill by himself shouting that he's the most moral guy while getting us all killed in the course of violent revolution. That's just megalomania.
    They're very similar. One relies on rational thinking about actual expected outcomes, the other relies on one's own opinion about right and wrong.
    You have to be careful because it's deceivingly easy to be the latter and end up an accidental megalomaniac that kills us all.
    See history for countless examples.
  2. semi-extrinsic · 1790502694 · focus · HN ↗
    Or maybe it's so boring that the math of the universe (practically achieavable time to travel to another solar system) makes the galaxy a set of distinct systems, where 1 in X has an intelligent species which has achieved orbit, but with no transit in between.
    It's not a cool concept to write scifi books about, but it may still be the reality we live in.
    The most likely situation (by many orders of magnitude) is that the only practical way of getting to another star system, even in the far far future, is a generation ship travelling 50+ years one way with a significant risk of people dying from organ failure or cancer along the route. This would represent a 1000x speed improvement over current tech and is only a factor of 10x slower than lightspeed.
    It is entirely unfeasible for any company or even government to spend money on such a project. Even if the ground on the other planet is strewn with diamonds and gold and the elixir of eternal life, you are looking at ~200 years before any ROI can be realised.
    BoxOfRain · 1790504162 · focus · HN ↗
    I've always felt radical human life extension and sublight speeds was a more realistic shot at interstellar travel than thinking relativity is amenable to shithousery.
    Brian_K_White · 1790515119 · focus · HN ↗
    It only takes 5 years to communicate with the nearest star, and communication alone is worth doing.
    slfnflctd · 1790518227 · focus · HN ↗
    > the only practical way of getting to another star system, even in the far far future, is a generation ship travelling 50+ years one way with a significant risk of people dying from organ failure or cancer along the route
    1) The first mission would almost certainly be a set of robotic probes (especially in light of recent developments)
    2) As controversial as it may be, we could genetically engineer descendants who are better suited for space travel
    3) Cybernetics hold the potential to preserve the biological human 'essence' (brain and nervous system) while minimizing the amount of living material requiring maintenance
    When you're looking at long enough time spans - which we should have if we manage to avoid extincting ourselves - many more possibilities emerge beyond simply "put a bunch of regular humans as we currently are into a tin can".
    semi-extrinsic · 1790579738 · focus · HN ↗
    None of these points solve the underlying economic problem. You would not get any ROI for hundreds of years, at which point the people who made the huge investment are no longer alive, and the companies/nations may not even exist anymore.
    slfnflctd · 1790593895 · focus · HN ↗
    There is no clear ROI for a whole bunch of the research we do. Yes, the system will likely always be a bit biased toward research that does eventually lead to some sort of profitable enterprise, but any self respecting scientist turns a blind eye to that in favor of purely learning new things.
    semi-extrinsic · 1790612702 · focus · HN ↗
    I have no argument against the case that scientists may one day send a probe to travel to other solar systems. Probably it will be unmanned.
    This does not extrapolate to a dark forest scenario.
    AngryData · 1790632987 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think we need a profit motive. Egyption pyramids would never pay off, and im willing to bet a lot of their construction was just for the cool factor and "look at what we can do collectively because we have so much excess of time and goods!"
    History is full of monuments and art who's only purpose was to be cool. And sending humans to another solar system would be a pretty cool monument to humanity.
    It is more of a PR problem really to convince people to contribute.
    api · 1790518680 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m willing to bet that figuring out how to survive cryostasis is easier than building any kind of starship.
    Do that first. It has huge medical benefits too, so it’s dual use not just for space flight.
  3. paimapi · 1790538488 · focus · HN ↗
    or it could be that the pan-spermia theory bears out and we are downstream products of ejected extremophiles that survived a space trip through the relatively short solar system
    there's far too much unknown about the origins of life to say we even have a basic guess as to the probabilities of life
3. andrekandre · 1790475766 · focus · HN ↗
  > Seriously want to know what people really think...
  (in a vacuum) i think we would all be saying thats amazing and fundamentally change the way we see ourselves and place in the universe (science fiction becomes science fact)
  > find "life". So? Why is this important to people?
  when there are more down-to-earth problems right in front of us, i get this as well; why not use that money to fund free college for a couple years for all citizens etc etc (and i wouldn't disagree with you either)
4. ransom1538 · 1790477072 · focus · HN ↗
  "~$50 Billion"
  Are you saying people would rather have an apartment? It would house 250,000 people for 10 years. But the slime is cooler.
5. tombert · 1790477151 · focus · HN ↗
  My honest reason (and this is coming from a guy with no stake in the game or significant physics or biology knowledge) is that it would just be cool as fuck, and that exploration is valuable in itself.
  I'll acknowledge that that is wishy-washy language, but that's kind of my point. I'm not sure I can point to an objective "good" that comes out of it, but I also don't know that that's the norm for these kinds of things either. It might have been hard to say that going to the moon was an objective "good" outside of one-upping the Russians, but I do think it's good that we did it, even if I don't really know how to quantify why.
  1. card_zero · 1790507919 · focus · HN ↗
    Can't quantify why the things that we can quantify are good, either, without an infinite regress.
6. conception · 1790477212 · focus · HN ↗
  A majority of the planet thinks life started here. Finding it elsewhere would culturally be a cosmic (puns) shift of before alien life existed verifiably and after.
  1. thrance · 1790516304 · focus · HN ↗
    Sadly, not really. That's really underestimating the capacity of religions and their followers to weather and rationalize away new facts that directly contradict their myths and cosmology. If Christianity was able to survive Evolution and the Big Bang, discovering a few cells on Europa won't even make a dent.
    conception · 1790537022 · focus · HN ↗
    Certainly for some but unlike evolution and the big bang, nebulous concepts, proven life on another planet will be a cultural change. We won’t be the only life in the universe and that will have a profound impact on how we look at the stars moving forward.
7. Teever · 1790478489 · focus · HN ↗
  Benjamin Franklin is said to have replied, "What use is a new-born baby?" in response to a skeptic of the utility of some of the first balloon launches.
  I suspect that you won't be swayed by the abstract benefits of intelligent life on Earth finding not just proof of life on another body in our solar system but actual life that we could perhaps even launch retrieval missions to return to Earth for analysis so I won't talk about Darwin and his voyages and the theory of evolution that it resulted in as people often do in these conversations.
  Instead I'll ask you what you think the dollar value of studying and reverse engineering an alternate or similar biochemical system survives in a world totally different than our own. What sort of applications could this have in materials science? What kind of new materials could we discover from alien life? What kind of novel bio-mimetic applications could we derive from this?
  I look around the room I'm in and I see a hardwood floor, I see a differnet species tree making up woodpaneling on the walls. My clothes are made of cotton and rayon, there's some sort of grass woven lampshade above me. books made of paper, paintings with linseed oil paint -- what's the commercial and cultural value of all that stuff to our species?
8. inkyoto · 1790482753 · focus · HN ↗
  For the very same reason why the wisest of the ancient and medieval rulers were patrons of science, even if the value of scientific discoveries was not immediately apparent at the time.
  It is called enlightenment and the discovery of knowledge. Otherwise, we would still have been running around with pitchforks and flaming torches, waging crusades in the name of one deity or another.
  Besides, humans spend $50 billion or – equally arguably much more – killing or trying to kill each other. If that gets spent on new discoveries and knowledge, it becomes apparent that the $50 billion investment into science is a substantially better proposition.
9. jiggawatts · 1790485172 · focus · HN ↗
  Serious answer: because an entirely distinct biosphere would be a veritably goldmine for biochemistry research! We could discover enzymes that work under extreme conditions like high pressure, low temperature, all while bathed in a soup of chemicals toxic to terrestrial life. For all we know, we could discover a simple way to catalyse ammonia production at low temperatures and feed the world with cheap fertiliser! Or… who knows!? We won’t know until we go looking!
10. wrecked_em · 1790492659 · focus · HN ↗
  I right there when you on this. With so much inequality and pain in our own neighborhoods, why does the search for extraterrestrial life even matter? I used to really enjoy it. Now I view it as a sad sort of distraction theater.
11. pestatije · 1790498113 · focus · HN ↗
  we find life... that wouldn't be the end of it... we'd want to know what it is, how it got there, can it be useful, etc etc...so in the end half of Earth's population is eating potatoes and we have no more famine for 5 centuries... seriously i can't believe a HN reader doesn't understand curiosity and its benefits
12. gosub100 · 1790498191 · focus · HN ↗
  > we spend ~$50 Billion (arguably much more)
  Thanks to the 2nd most hated man alive, it doesn't cost nearly this much to get to space anymore.
  1. hermitcrab · 1790498860 · focus · HN ↗
    And the thousands of people that actually did the work.
  2. idiotsecant · 1790511964 · focus · HN ↗
    And the first most hated man made some really cool rockets too and was a great innovator in the realm of tiny little moustaches.
    People can simultaneously be terrible humans and accomplish positive things while doing it.
    It doesn't make them a better human.
    rsynnott · 1790543982 · focus · HN ↗
    > and was a great innovator in the realm of tiny little moustaches
    He was not; he managed to kill off the style, but it's from the 19th century and was actually somewhat popular at one point.
  3. rsynnott · 1790543876 · focus · HN ↗
    Eh. The rather similar JUICE and Europa Clipper Jupiter moon missions (~6 tonnes, going to the same place) were launched in 2023 and 2024 respectively. JUICE went on an Ariane 5 ECA for 150 million euro, the Europa Clipper went on a Falcon Heavy for $178 million. So, er, about the same cost. Reports of cheap access to space have been greatly exaggerated.
13. Brian_K_White · 1790517896 · focus · HN ↗
  What use is anything at all, or knowing anything at all?
  Why are you yourself important to people? Certainly nothing I care about relies on your existence. The answer isn't anything you do, even the things you do for other people, because why do they matter either? You don't need any utilitarian justification.
  We don't spend $x to attain any specific goal like buying an acre of land or a lathe. We spend $x to find out whatever is the reality. It doesn't matter what we find, whether it has some obvious immediate "can I eat it or F it?" application or not. The goal was to find out whatever the facts are.
  The utility of that knowledge is unknown but infinite. For the infinite rest of time it will be part of whatever infinite humans want to do.
  You can contrive infinite possible infinitely valuable utilitarian uses but that misses the point and dignifies an assumption that was invalid to begin with.
  We spend $x to explore the nature of reality because we are not incurious ants merely following just enough programming to perpetuate.
  The only value of utility itself is that it empowers us to pursue whatever goals we may want. Not merely the power to continue existing. We don't need any knowledge or tools or materials at all for that. Utterly brainless plants continue to exist without knowing or posessing anything.
  Nothing that you do find useful, like presumably an accessible mineral deposit, is any different than something like this that you don't find useful.
14. immmmmm · 1790520124 · focus · HN ↗
  Serious question: US spend 50+ B$ / month to throw JDAMs on little girls schools, what do we gain here?
15. troyvit · 1790524478 · focus · HN ↗
  I think there's plenty we can do about it.
  * If we find life on another planet it provides a realignment for most of our world religions. That's important to several billion people. It might even create a new religion. We haven't had one of those in awhile, how exciting is that?
  * If we spent $50 Billion to find algae on Enceladus we'd definitely spend 200x that to put said algae on a billionaire's plate for them to eat. That would fuel hard sciences and the economy in numerous ways, similar to how the space race gave us Nike Air shoes and the Dustbuster [1]. Like you say a human would probably never dip their toe in the water of Enceladus but we would get a lot better at drilling holes and extracting.
  * We need more enemies and aliens would be great, even if they are single-celled. It would probably result in a global defense system within 50 years which would once again have several ancillary benefits for technology and warfare.
  [1] <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-would...
16. Ar-Curunir · 1790531684 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
17. rsynnott · 1790543091 · focus · HN ↗
  > So, we spend ~$50 Billion (arguably much more) and find "life".
  Where are you getting 50bn from? There are currently two large probes on their way to study Jupiter's moons, JUICE (costing 1.5bn EUR) and Europa Clipper (costing 5bn USD). Saturn's _somewhat_ more difficult, but not enough to take the cost to 50bn!
sage981 · 1790478729 · focus · HN ↗
Bet their civilization's 'Hello World' is still stuck in an infinite loop. Fascinating possibilities though.
veexx103 · 1790479756 · focus · HN ↗
If life really exists there, it implies that life is everywhere in the universe.
That was absolutely terrifying.
1. bpodgursky · 1790480524 · focus · HN ↗
  Not really, there has been a lot of crossover of organic-carrying meteors within our own solar system, it's pretty plausible that multiple bodies in our solar system have life from a single origin event, which doesn't say anything about the rest of the universe.
2. adrian_b · 1790495059 · focus · HN ↗
  It is likely that conditions for the appearance of life exist in many places in the universe, though probably not in every stellar system.
  However, it is also likely that the places where living beings can evolve into something more complex than bacteria are only a small fraction of those where life exists.
  There are chances that life might exist on one or more of the satellites of Jupiter or Saturn, but it is pretty certain that it cannot be more complex than bacteria or at most protozoa, because on Earth the evolution of big multicellular living beings was conditioned by the development of the ability to extract energy from solar light.
  Without solar light, the maximum rate of energy production is from methanogenesis, which would not sustain any big living being.
  Solar light is too weak at that distance anyway, and life, if it exists, is burrowed at depths where the temperature is high enough, where any light is likely to be completely attenuated.
3. karmakurtisaani · 1790506219 · focus · HN ↗
  I find it fairly plausible that life exists anywhere the conditions are even slightly favorable. All you need is just enough time for some atoms to form a self-replicating configuration and that pretty much kick starts it.
  It might not evolve into something very complex, though.
WorseIsBetter · 1790499399 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
limbicsystem · 1790514344 · focus · HN ↗
Note that in one way finding life on other planets would be a disaster - implying that the 'great filter' is more likely to still be ahead of us...
1. ajuc · 1790516716 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. sebzim4500 · 1790519583 · focus · HN ↗
    It depends if it shares a common ancestor with life on earth
2. gaigalas · 1790520972 · focus · HN ↗
  Not exactly. It could mean we're far beyond it (see my other comment). If life has a higher chance of developing in the outskirts, and needs an incredible coincidence to "land" on a more geologically interesting rocky planet closer to the system's star to develop into more complex organisms, it means we're way past that filter and a pioneer form of life.
  Truth is, we don't know enough to take any filter hypothesis seriously.
3. KellyCriterion · 1790525604 · focus · HN ↗
  After watching this behind-the-scenes video by EngineAI about this one T800 robo video (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoytjBgpG28" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoytjBgpG28), Im convinced that we will kill ourself / go extinct by these robots (if climate change doesnt kill all of us far before)
  This will not be in 10 or 30 years. But in 70-100. Maybe robots are the future life form the universe "sees" here so something finally can reach outer space from here.
  And I think its very likely that other civilizations aslo killed themself by inventing AI some day in their time.
  Though, Claude is the best tool ever for me :)
  1. gaigalas · 1790533103 · focus · HN ↗
    Making predictions that outlast you is easy, you can never be ashamed of being wrong. The most useful predictions can be checked within a lifetime, the others are useless.
    KellyCriterion · 1790537301 · focus · HN ↗
    Good one!
    Im in the middle of my 40s, so maybe I will see the first "steps" into that direction. But even if I dont: The idea that robots are taking over, built by us, is just insane: If they reach a level of "self improvement and self repair/care", humans will be just finished - not in a "sense of bad will" like "kill-all-those-dumb-humans", but in a sense of: Their technosphere will last longer and is very much more likely to survive climate change than the thin & vulnerable bio sphere we humans need?
    Though, maybe there is some type of equilibrium in the future with much less humans at a stable rate, really stable lake just enough kids that mankind doesnt grow,and a large set of robots assisting us. But this is too far "positive sci fi", Id say?
    gaigalas · 1790539956 · focus · HN ↗
    > Their technosphere will last longer
    Life has 4.5B years. Predicting silicon would last more is doubling down on what I said: you went for 100 years to a roughly 5 billion years prediction.
    Let me remind you that a single unlucky CME can fry 80% of comms satellites and electrical grid, effectively crippling the entire technosphere you mention in a matter of hours.
    One small war that disrupts the silicon supply chain can set back the development of AI for a whole decade. One company (ASML) having issues could do that. It is a very fragile system.
    Climate change is a deep concern mostly because it would cause unimaginable suffering and massive loss of population, but it's likely humanity would survive it. We survived worse: supervolcanos, ice ages, multi-decade droughts, etc. It would be preferable to avoid it though.
gaigalas · 1790520838 · focus · HN ↗
The most interesting thing about Enceladus having life is the possibility of the natural dispersal mechanism.
Life starts deep in the Enceladus ocean, gets jettisoned by the plume, parks on Saturn's rings which becomes a huge distribution mechanism. If one extremophile reaches there, it means we could find not only a source of life but a mechanism for panspermia.
It is believed that the giant planets all develop and lose their rings over time, each time a moon is eaten. If the plumes are caused by Saturn's gravity perturbing the planet, it makes this mechanism highly plausible in all sorts of systems that have giants (and we know there's a lot of them).
1. paimapi · 1790538330 · focus · HN ↗
  Saturn being basically a giant pollen-dense flower has an allegorical beauty to it
karim79 · 1790544558 · focus · HN ↗
I love the idea of a probe collecting a gush of water from this moon. I'm equally a fan of another probe going to Europa, drilling through the ice, and launching a 4k video-recording underwater drone to reveal a crazy underwater ecosystem like in the game Subnautica.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.