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 Write a 250+ word response to the article

Right Stuff for Life Found on Small Saturn Moon

Nadia Drake, National Geographic, June 27, 2018 (adapted)

On Saturn’s small moon Enceladus, perpetual fountains of alien seawater

launch all sorts of curious stuff into space: water, salt, silica, and even simple
carbon-containing compounds fly into the void—many of which are
ingredients for life as we know it.

Now, scientists working with data from a dead spacecraft have discovered
something even more potentially intriguing: heavy organic compounds
containing hundreds of atoms arranged in rings and chains. These are the
most complex organic molecules uncovered so far at Enceladus, and they
may make the moon the most promising place in our solar system to search
for life beyond Earth.

“What we know today is telling us that Enceladus is an outstanding target to

go look for life, and there may be microbes living in that ocean today,” says
Cornell University’s Jonathan Lunine.

Discovered by the Saturn-exploring Cassini spacecraft in late 2005, icy jets

erupting from Enceladus were a surprise to most scientists. Blasting through
fissures in the south polar region, the jets contain seawater from a global
ocean locked beneath the moon’s icy shell. Over the years, scientists have
been able to study those jets and determine that hydrothermal vents in the
seafloor are providing heat and energy.

“It shows that something is going on there, that complex organic chemistry is
happening and that we can probe it from space. That’s just an amazing
finding,” says Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg, lead author on
the paper describing the results today in the journal Nature.

Dust Detector

Though Cassini ended its exploration of the Saturn system by purposefully

plunging into the ringed planet last September, the spacecraft’s enormous
trove of data is stuffed with treasures waiting to be mined.

Postberg and his colleagues decided to look at data gathered during E ring
flybys between 2004 and 2008, when the instrument was least contaminated
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by interplanetary dust. The spacecraft collected and studied about ten
thousand dust particles. And in roughly one percent of those, Postberg and
his colleagues identified complex organic compounds.

Floating Film

It’s the first time such heavy organics have been identified at Enceladus.
Previously, Cassini detected lighter, gassy molecules such as methane and
ethane. But the newly detected molecules are heavier and comprise of many
more carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen atoms.

“While we have found large molecules outside of Earth before, this is the
first time they have been detected emerging from a liquid water ocean,” says
Morgan Cable of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who looks for life in
improbable places on Earth.

“Many large organic molecules are not stable in liquid water for extended
periods of time, so one of the next questions to ask is, where are these
organic molecules coming from?”

Postberg and his colleagues think it’s likely that newly formed heavy
organics rise to the top of the moon’s buried ocean and end up floating in a
layer near areas where water erupts from fissures at the south pole.

Lying in Wait

Though tantalizing, this soup of carbon-containing riches is not an

indication of life yet. Many processes could have crafted such structures in
the absence of extra-terrestrial metabolisms.

“Are they being made by abiotic processing at the bottom of the ocean,
where the rock and water meet, or are they the waste products of microbes?
That’s the question, with a capital Q,” Lunine says.

The molecular soup tells scientists that the environment beneath Enceladus’s
icy shell is capable of extremely complex chemistries. Whether those
reactions are completely independent of life and fuelled simply by chemistry
and geology or are result of extra-terrestrial life in the Enceladian sea is still
unknown.

“We should try to go back to Enceladus as soon as we can,” Lunine says.

“It’s waiting for us.”

For now, Enceladus will have to wait. And so will scientists, who will
continue hoping that maybe someday soon they will coax this promising
astro-biological target into revealing its secrets in real time.

Possible response options:

 Would life on earth change if extra-terrestrial life is found on
Enceladus? Why or why not?
 Choose any section and respond to it.

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Answer the following questions based on the article above:
1. What have scientists discovered on Enceladus?

___________________________________________________________________________

2. Is this discovery (your answer to question 1) a sign of life? Explain.

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

3. How did scientists make this discovery (your answer to question 1)?

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

4. Write another catchy title for this article.

___________________________________________________________________________

5. Give the meaning of each of the following words as it is used in the passage. In each case
give one word or short phrase:
a. perpetual ______________________________________________________ [1]

b. intriguing ______________________________________________________ [1]

c. trove ______________________________________________________ [1]

d. detected ______________________________________________________ [1]

e. extended ______________________________________________________ [1]

f. tantalizing ______________________________________________________ [1]

Facilitator’s Signature

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