The icy ocean of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, might contain an abundance of phosphorus, a building block for life.
At first, the team’s geochemical modeling indicated that phosphate might be scarce, but more recent tests revealed that phosphate concentrations could be “at least 100-fold higher in the moon’s plume-forming ocean waters than in Earth’s oceans,” the study read. According to NASA, phosphorus is essential to our DNA and is often found in bones, cell membranes and plankton.
“High phosphate concentrations are a result of interactions between carbonate-rich liquid water and rocky minerals on Enceladus’ ocean floor and may also occur on a number of other ocean worlds,” Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist and geochemist Christopher Glein told . “This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus’ ocean; this is a stunning discovery for astrobiology.”, CDA researchers discovered that Enceladus produced a plume of water and spewed silica-rich rocks, suggesting that they came from a region with “hydrothermal activity.”“Having the ingredients is necessary, but they may not be sufficient for an extraterrestrial environment to host life,” Glein continued.
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