{"id":165779,"date":"2023-06-14T19:25:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T00:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/key-building-block-for-life-found-at-saturns-moon-enceladus"},"modified":"2023-06-14T19:25:16","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T00:25:16","slug":"key-building-block-for-life-found-at-saturns-moon-enceladus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/key-building-block-for-life-found-at-saturns-moon-enceladus","title":{"rendered":"Key building block for life found at Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/key-building-block-for-life-found-at-saturns-moon-enceladus2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute\u2019s Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life. The team directly detected phosphorus in the form of phosphates originating from the moon\u2019s ice-covered global ocean using data from NASA\u2019s Cassini mission. Cassini explored Saturn and its system of rings and moons for over 13 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 2020 (published in 2022), we used geochemical modeling to predict that phosphorus should be abundant in Enceladus\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/ocean\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">ocean<\/a>,\u201d said Glein, a leading expert in extraterrestrial oceanography. He is a co-author of a paper in the journal <i>Nature<\/i> describing this research. \u201cNow, we have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Cassini spacecraft discovered Enceladus\u2019 subsurface liquid water and analyzed samples in a plume of ice grains and gases erupting into space from cracks in the moon\u2019s icy surface. Analysis of a class of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini\u2019s Cosmic Dust Analyzer showed the presence of sodium phosphates. The team\u2019s observational results, together with laboratory analogue experiments, suggest that phosphorus is readily available in Enceladus\u2019 ocean as phosphates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute\u2019s Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life. The team directly detected phosphorus in the form of phosphates originating from [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":579,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}