Saturn moon 'able to support life'
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Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#2Not a huge surprise. Most likely our kind of environment is an unusual place for life, it might be much more normal for life outside the frost line to run on geothermal energy (where there are 10 or so bodies with liquid water) as opposed to the one small rock that didn't get all the water boiled away by the sun.
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#3The end of God is near.
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#4If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations on the universe.
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#5Here's the paper mentioned in the article ...
Cassini finds molecular hydrogen in the Enceladus plume: Evidence for hydrothermal processes
> Saturn's moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean covered by a layer of ice. Some liquid escapes into space through cracks in the ice, which is the source of one of Saturn's rings. In October 2015, the Cassini spacecraft flew directly through the plume of escaping material and sampled its chemical composition. Waite et al. found that the plume contains molecular hydrogen, H2, a sign that the water in Enceladus' ocean is reacting with rocks through hydrothermal processes (see the Perspective by Seewald). This drives the ocean out of chemical equilibrium, in a similar way to water around Earth's hydrothermal vents, potentially providing a source of chemical energy.
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#6If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
how would determine that it's completely disconnected? not asking snarkily. seems like you could push the goalposts back to say that whatever allows for life on earth is true of earth + our neighborhood/solar system, but not necessarily elsewhere, sort of like how the definition of AI keeps expanding.
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#7If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
Well, deep sea, thermal vent life is predominantly blind on earth at least. One may postulate this form of life is much less likely to form technological civilizations thus moderating such. Thoughts?
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#8Coincidentally a book was written a few decades ago called "Ringmakers of Saturn" which discusses the presence of alien life around Saturn as well.
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#9If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
Well, deep sea, thermal vent life is predominantly blind on earth at least. One may postulate this form of life is much less likely to form technological civilizations thus moderating such. Thoughts?
They may end up like the creatures in the "The Abyss" and be really good at manipulating water. Who knows?
Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
#10If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
Well, deep sea, thermal vent life is predominantly blind on earth at least. One may postulate this form of life is much less likely to form technological civilizations thus moderating such. Thoughts?
These are separate variables in the equation. The drake equation multiplies a bunch of probabilities together, one of which is "probability of planet having life" and another is "probability of life becoming technologically sophisticated". A the moment we don't really understand how life starts, so it could be really really unlikely or it could be pretty common. finding independent life events in our solar system means it's pretty common (otherwise it could be 0.00001%).
Here's the full equation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation