Saturn’s moon Enceladus The result may be A more convenient target for the search for extraterrestrial life than previously thought. An international team of scientists has discovered that ice particles produced by underground emissions from the ocean not only carry water samples into space, but also naturally sort and concentrate the materials they contain. The Earth itself will prepare samples for research, which will aid the work of analytical instruments on board space probes.
Image source: NASA
Enceladus is considered one of the most promising objects for astrobiological research, apparently due to the presence of a global ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. Through cracks in the satellite’s Antarctic region, huge jets of water vapor and ice particles are ejected into space. NASA’s Cassini probe has passed through these cracks many times to analyze their composition. A new study shows that the seawater droplets in these emissions do not freeze immediately, as previously thought, but gradually. During slow freezing, solutes are separated: for example, sodium chloride and sodium carbonate are concentrated in different areas where ice particles form.
In the cracks in the earth’s crust, ice particles that evaporate and freeze from the water surface are accelerated by the steam flow to a speed of about 1,000 kilometers per hour, and collide with the ice channel wall, breaking into fragments only a few microns in size. Therefore, a single particle may contain an almost pure concentration of certain substances, including salts and organic compounds. The researchers say this natural process greatly facilitates the probe’s search for biomarkers: If there are microorganisms or their remains in Enceladus’s ocean, their components may be collected in small amounts of ice grains and could be more easily detected by the probe’s modern analytical instruments simply by flying through Enceladus’s plumes.
The second piece of work on this project was even more interesting. Scientists have recreated the conditions of the moon’s ocean in the laboratory: high alkalinity, with a pH of about 10-11, low oxygen and high carbonate content, where the water reacts chemically with the rocky bottom to produce hydrogen gas. The earth is placed in such an environment Archaea Methanothermococcus Okinawa can obtain energy in the absence of oxygen by converting hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane (it lives in hot springs on Earth). Unexpectedly, the microbe was able to adapt to simulated conditions on Enceladus and continue to produce methane despite the extremely limited amount of carbon dioxide available. Scientists emphasize that this does not prove that there is life on Saturn’s moons, but it does suggest that underlying biological processes may be sustainable even in unusual extraterrestrial environments.
The findings will be critical to the design of future missions to Enceladus, including concepts capable of analyzing single ice particles in its ejecta. The European Space Agency plans to carry out one of these missions. Scientists are ready to work with him on this issue.
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