One of Saturn’s Moons Has the Potential for Life

All of us can thank water for helping life emerge from the remnants of the big bang. Earth is awash in that slippery combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but we’ve always thought the rest of the solar system is mostly barren rock, noxious gases, and ice made from some really nasty stuff.

This is not entirely the case, it seems. NASA announced Thursday that a subsurface ocean has been detected on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, with hydrogen pouring into it from hydrothermal activity on the sea floor. The gas could potentially provide a chemical energy source for life, researchers from the Cassini project to Saturn and the Hubble Space Telescope report. The findings suggest that Enceladus has an ocean below its surface similar to the one believed to exist on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.