The chances of life on Enceladus have just risen thanks to a new understanding of the chemistry of the moon's ocean.
However, a new study led by Jihua Hao, a senior research scientist at the University of Science and Technology of China, contradicts these earlier findings, claiming that the 2018 research used outdated geochemical models of Enceladus' rocky ocean floor.
"While the bio-essential element phosphorus has yet to be identified directly, our team discovered evidence for its availability in the ocean beneath the moon's icy crust," study co-author Christopher Glein, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in aUsing new modeling based on the latest available data, Hao and Glein's group simulated how phosphorus-rich minerals called phosphates dissolve into the ocean from Enceladus' rocky...
A cross section of Enceladus' interior showing how phosphorus-bearing minerals can dissolve into orthophosphate that can then enrich the ocean but potentially be gushed into space by the geysers. "The underlying geochemistry has an elegant simplicity that makes the presence of dissolved phosphorus inevitable, reaching levels close to, or even higher than, those in modern seawater [on Earth]," Glein said."What this means for astrobiology is that we can be more confident than before that the ocean of Enceladus is habitable."