Life ... residing in Enceladus?

This artist’s impression depicts NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flying through a plume of presumed water erupting from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Credit: NASA

Life ... residing in Enceladus? It's possible thanks to Methane, a key ingredient for life found in the plumes of a tiny moon orbiting Saturn.

An unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University.

Giant water plumes erupting from Enceladus have long fascinated scientists and the public alike, inspiring research and speculation about the vast ocean that is believed to be sandwiched between the moon’s rocky core and its icy shell. Flying through the plumes and sampling their chemical makeup, the Cassini spacecraft detected a relatively high concentration of certain molecules associated with hydrothermal vents on the bottom of Earth’s oceans, specifically dihydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. The amount of methane found in the plumes was particularly unexpected.

It gets better.

The results suggest that even the highest possible estimate of abiotic methane production — or methane production without biological aid — based on known hydrothermal chemistry is far from sufficient to explain the methane concentration measured in the plumes. Adding biological methanogenesis to the mix, however, could produce enough methane to match Cassini’s observations.

This cutaway view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is an artist’s rendering that depicts possible hydrothermal activity that may be taking place on and under the seafloor of the moon’s subsurface ocean, based on results from NASA’s Cassini mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Something's afoot yet again. :)