The ongoing deep dive into data from NASA’s Cassini mission has found smaller and soluble organic building blocks on Saturn’s ocean-moon Enceladus – potential precursors for amino acids and other ingredients required for life on Earth. The findings shows that Enceladus’ ocean has reactive building blocks in abundance, and it’s another green light in the investigation of the habitability of Enceladus, said co-author Frank Postberg, about new kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, that have been detected in the Enceladus’ towering plumes.
NASA chief scientist Jim Green, says we’re just years away from finding life on Mars, but the world is not ready for the “revolutionary” implications of the discovery as two Mars-bound rovers –from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA)– are scheduled to launch next year and will land on the red planet by March 2021 and one or both could find evidence of life within months. The discovery will start a whole new line of thinking, says Green. “I don’t think we’re prepared for the results. I’ve been worried about that because I think we’re close to finding it and making some announcements,” he told Great Britain’s The Telegraph.
The “Planet Earth Report” connects you to headline news on the science, technology, discoveries, people and events changing our planet and the future of the human species.
The “Planet Earth Report” connects you to headline news on the science, technology, discoveries, people and events changing our planet and the future of the human species.
“It would be tantalizing to find microfossils of extraterrestrial forms of life on the moon. Even more exciting would be to find traces of technological equipment that crashed on the lunar surface a billion years ago, amounting to a letter from an alien civilization saying, “We exist,” writes Harvard University’s chief astronomer Avi Loeb, asking can the moon provide clues for extraterrestrial life?
