The Lost City and Saturn’s moon Enceladus: A habitable environment
After determining that the ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus has roughly the same pH as Windex or soapy water -- an indication that the water has been in contact with rock, creating potentially life-friendly chemistry -- scientists are moving on to the trickier hunt for evidence of hydrothermal venting.
“This is really is a world with a habitable environment in its interior,” planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine, with Cornell University, said at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.
Early analysis of Cassini’s 30-mile high pass over Enceladus on Oct. 28 indicates that the moon’s subsurface ocean, which is believed to be the source of the plumes, has telltale chemical fingerprints of water that has interacted with rock.
“This is remarkably high pH solution,” said geochemist Christopher Glein with the University of Toronto and the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“How did it get that way? We think that what happened on Enceladus, and which could still be happening today, is that there were geochemical reactions between magnesium and iron-rich rocks in Enceladus’ core reacting with ocean water. Those reactions led to the high pH,” Glein said.
The process, known as serpentinization, has been found on Earth, such as in Lost City, a field of alkaline hydrothermal vents in the mid-Atlantic ocean.
Another geochemical consequence of serpentinization is the mass production of hydrogen gas.
The Lost City vents near Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_City_Hydrothermal_Field
http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/life-friendly-chemistry-revealed-inside-enceladus-151215.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
I thought you might enjoy my 1950's style
Sci Fi headline..
= new reply since forum marked as read
Now with water from Saturn's moon
That was part of the genesis of the modern SciFi genre, which bloomed big time in the early 50's. I love those old films and radio dramas. Dimension X and X Minus One were wonderful radio broadcasts from the early 50's with a panoply of the most celebrated SciFi authors. Best of all, there are online archives of these programs. They offer a wonderful look back. I highly recommend them to any SciFi fan. Lots of Asimov and Bradbury, with plenty of other SciFi luminaries.
Google will find the MPEG 3 archives. Well worth the effort.
Nice to see your posts, my friend.
