Could a Saturn moon harbor life Carolyn Porco

two years ago here at Ted I reported

that we had discovered at Saturn with

the Cassini spacecraft an anomalously

warm and geologically active region at

the southern tip of the small Saturnian

moon Enceladus seen here this region

seen here for the first time in a

Cassini image taken in 2005 this is the

south polar region with the famous tiger

stripe fractures crossing the South Pole

and seen just recently in late 2008 here

is that region again now half in

darkness because the southern hemisphere

is experiencing the onset of August and

eventually winter and I also reported

that we’d made this mind-blowing

discovery this once-in-a-lifetime

discovery of towering Jets erupting from

those fractures at the South Pole

consisting of tiny water ice crystals

accompanied by water vapor and simple

organic compounds like carbon dioxide

and methane and at that time two years

ago I mentioned that we were speculating

that these Jets might in fact be geysers

and erupting from pockets or chambers of

liquid water underneath the surface but

we weren’t really sure

however the implications of those

results of a possible environment within

this moon that could support prebiotic

chemistry and perhaps life itself

we’re so exciting that in the

intervening two years we have focused

more on Enceladus we’ve flown the

Cassini spacecraft by this moon now

several times flying closer and deeper

into these Jets into the denser regions

of these Jets so that now we have come

away with some very precise

compositional measurements and we have

found that the organic compounds coming

from this moon are in fact more complex

and we previously reported while they’re

not amino acids we’re now finding things

like propane and benzene hydrogen

cyanide and formaldehyde and the tiny

water crystals here now look for all the

world like they are frozen droplets of

salty water which is a discovery that

suggests that not only do the Jets come

from

it’s of liquid water but that that

liquid water is in contact with rock and

that is a circumstance that could supply

the chemical energy and the chemical

compounds needed to sustain life so we

are very encouraged by these results and

we’re much more confident now than we

were two years ago that we might indeed

have on this moon under the South Pole

an environment or a zone that is

hospitable to living organisms whether

or not there are living organisms there

of course is an entirely different

matter and that will have to await the

arrival back at Enceladus of a

spacecraft hopefully sometime in the

near future specifically equipped to

address that particular question but in

the meantime I invite you to imagine the

day when we might journey to the

Saturnian system and visit the Enceladus

interplanetary geyser park just because

we can thank you