Is there really life in the oceans of Enceladus? Researcher: Let's first look at how salty the sea is

Since the 21st century, scientists' goal of finding extraterrestrial life has gradually shifted from planets to satellites. For example, Europa and Ganymede orbiting Jupiter, and Titan orbiting Saturn, and the protagonist of our article today - Enceladus.

One of the common features of these satellites is that there is a liquid ocean under the ice shell. We all know that on Earth, the ocean has always been considered to be the "primitive soup" of life. Then, in the ocean of Enceladus, it will also be Does life exist?

Is there really life in the oceans of Enceladus?

In the solar system, Enceladus is not the largest satellite, however, it is the brightest one. As early as the end of the 18th century, Enceladus had been discovered. However, human's in-depth understanding of Enceladus , It really started in the 1980s. In 1977, the United States launched Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 one after another. Voyager 1 once flew by the Saturn system and photographed a lot of precious information about Enceladus. photo.

Scientists have found that although Enceladus is not large, it has many ancient craters on its surface. At the same time, there are also geomorphic features that are only about 100 million years old. These all mean that it has a thick ice shell. Enceladus, in fact its interior may be very active.

At the beginning of the 21st century, NASA's Kensey probe once again arrived at the Saturn system. This time, the researchers reconfirmed that Enceladus is indeed one of the most active satellites in the solar system, and compared to several other scientists, scientists are optimistic As far as the moon is concerned, Enceladus has to surprise scientists even more.

Subsequently, scientists believed that Enceladus was very likely to have life, and this conjecture was in 2015, after Japanese scientists discovered a "hot spring environment" on Enceladus, they believed that it was in line with the environmental laws of life evolution.

Scientists from Europe believe that Enceladus has a chemical composition similar to that of the early Earth, and that it has a "heat source reaction", which also means that there is a high probability of life in the subsurface ocean of Enceladus.

So, where is Enceladus' subsurface ocean? The researchers analyzed that the surface ice layer of Enceladus is about 30-40 kilometers away, and the area of ​​the subsurface ocean is about the same as that of Lake Superior on Earth.

However, whether there is life on Enceladus, in fact, only the ocean is not enough. It is also necessary to confirm the salinity of its ocean. The researchers said that in the past, the salinity of the ocean has been ignored, but the current research However, it is believed that the salinity of seawater may be the key that directly affects whether life has a chance to be born.

How salty is Enceladus' ocean?

Why is it said that the salinity of sea water determines the birth of life? This is because moderate seawater salinity determines the habitability of life. For example, if the salinity of sea water is too low, then life in the ocean will not be able to obtain enough energy. Conversely, if the salinity in the ocean is too high, life cannot survive either.

To put it more bluntly, whether life is born or not depends on the moderate salinity of seawater, whether it is Enceladus or Europa and other "potential life planets" that are currently attracting attention.

The researchers believe that the ocean salinity of Enceladus is about 4-40 grams of salt per kilogram of seawater. From this data, it can be seen that the gap is still very large, which also means that existing scientific research, It's not enough to prove whether there is life in the marine environment of Enceladus.

However, because there is a heat source on Enceladus, when the temperature of the underground sea water increases, the salinity of the natural sea water will also be higher, which shows that the habitable environment in the subsurface ocean of Enceladus is not in fact Stable, but sporadic, is also a huge survival challenge for the life in it.

In addition, scientists are currently divided on whether there is still organic matter in the ocean on Enceladus. This is also related to the fact that Enceladus itself is too small, resulting in its limited ocean area and its own ability to store chemicals. Through modeling analysis, the researchers believe that the ocean age of Enceladus is about 1 billion to 50 million years old, and this gap is also very large.

This also shows that the ocean of Enceladus is either too old or too young to allow life to be born on it smoothly. Relatively speaking, it is still larger, and Europa, which also has a relatively stable underground ocean, is more reliable. After all, many years ago, Europa was considered to be the most promising planet to find life in the solar system other than Earth. .

Now, NASA is also considering whether to launch an Enceladus probe to find clues of life on Enceladus, but because there are too many unknown problems on it, this has become the reason why scientists can't make a decision yet. , Do you think there will really be life on these satellites of the solar system? Welcome to leave a message and tell us your opinion!