Earth Microbes, Could Grow in Saturn's Moon Enceladus, Hidden Ocean.

Microbes found in Earth's deep ocean might grow on Saturn's moon Enceladus

Some very resilient Earth microbes might be able to thrive in the hidden ocean of Enceladus - the icy moon of Saturn that has become a prime candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life.

 From article, (Some very resilient Earth microbes might be able to thrive in the hidden ocean of Enceladus — the icy moon of Saturn that has become a prime candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life. Scientists have successfully cultivated a few of these tiny organisms in the lab under the same conditions that are thought to exist on the distant moon, opening up the possibility that life might be lurking under the world’s surface.

Enceladus is one of the most intriguing places in the Solar System since it has many crucial ingredients needed for life to thrive. For one, it has lots of water. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft — which explored the Saturn system from 2004 to 2017 — found that plumes of gas and particles erupt from the south pole of Enceladus, and these geysers stem from a global liquid water ocean underneath the moon’s crust. Scientists think that there may be hot vents in this ocean, too — cracks in the sea floor where heated rock mingles with the frigid waters. This mixing of hot and cold material seems to be creating a soup of chemical compounds that might support life.

In fact, some of the compounds that have been found in the plumes of Enceladus — methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen — are associated with a certain class of microbe that can survive without very much oxygen here on Earth. These organisms are known to gobble up carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and then release methane as a byproduct. So a group of researchers grew three kinds of these microbes in the same temperatures, pressures, and chemical solutions that are thought to exist on Enceladus. And one of the three strains was able to flourish and produce methane just fine under these conditions.

“We know that life can exist there,” Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell who worked on Cassini but did not contribute to this research, tells The Verge. “So there’s another reason to spend the resources to try to fly back to Enceladus and look for signs of life on the plume.”)

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