Enceladus Shows Signs of Hydrothermal Activity

Enceladus is a moon of Saturn which the Cassini spacecraft has recently sent back information of. The scientists at NASA have seen signs of present-day hydrothermal activity on the moon which leads them to consider that Enceladus may be harboring suitable environments for living organisms. Naturally this would be miniscule sized life and not full blown intellectual life as present on Earth.

So what is hydrothermal activity? When seawater goes through a rocky crust and then comes out infused with minerals the heat produced is referred to as hydrothermal activity. This is a regular occurrence in the oceans of Earth. Sean Hsu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder says that we can use these tiny grains of rock, spewed into space by geysers, to tell us about conditions on, and beneath the ocean floor of an icy moon.

John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington says that the locations in our solar system where extreme environments occur in which life might exist may bring us closer to answering the question: are we alone in the universe? Perhaps this science project will help us find alien life in our own solar system.