Enceladus has it all, new study reveals!
's oceans. The discovery, announced in a paper published Wednesday , shows that the icy moon, already one of the hottest candidates in the search for alien life, now satisfies"the strictest requirement of habitability."
's E ring, a tenuous halo of tiny ice particles. It was these particles that hit Cassini's instruments during its flybys.previous research While browsing through measurements of over 300 ice grains sampled by the Cassini spacecraft and the data reproduced in the lab for validation purposes, the team behind the new study spotted nine grains that had a clear fingerprint of orthophosphate, which is the only form of phosphorus that"It was a tantalizing moment when I first realized that these spectra very likely show phosphates," Postberg said, adding that his team was agnostic while analyzing the data.
"No one would be surprised if there's phosphate in the rock of Enceladus. There's phosphates on comets … it is not a big deal," Postberg said."The big deal is that it is dissolved in the ocean and with that [it's] readily available for the potential formation of life."The discovery has implications beyond Enceladus' corner in the solar system.
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