Key building block for life found at Saturn's moon Enceladus
Originally published by Southwest Research Institute, on June 14, 2023 SwRI Lead Scientist Dr. Christopher Glein was part of a team that found phosphorus, a key building block for life, from the subsurface ocean of Saturn's small moon, Enceladus. Liquid water erupts from the moon's subsurface ocean, forming a plume that contains grains of frozen ocean water. Some of these ice grains go on to form Saturn's E ring. The team analyzed Cassini spacecraft data from ice grains in the E ring, which revealed fingerprints of soluble phosphate salts from Enceladus' ocean. Credit: Cassini Imaging Team/SSI/JPL/ SWRI/ Freie Universität Berlin The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system j ust got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute 's Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life . The team directly detected phosphorus in th...