Hydrogen Molecules Hint at Habitability of Enceladus's Ocean
By JoAnna Wendel 13 April 2017
In a Science paper published today, scientists from NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn announced new findings that have big implications for the habitability of Saturn’s tiny, ice-covered moon Enceladus.
“Habitability, as the astrobiologists have defined it, is pretty much manifested in the interior ocean of Enceladus.”
Spoiler alert: It’s not aliens. But in the geyser-like plumes that constantly spew out of Enceladus’s southern fissures, the team found molecular hydrogen (H2). This finding adds more evidence to the idea that on the floor of the moon’s ocean, liquid water percolates into the rocky core and drives chemical reactions similar to those found at hydrothermal vents on Earth.
https://eos.org/articles/hydrogen-molecules-hint-at-habitability-of-enceladuss-ocean
