Enceladus, the most interesting moon of Saturn

On Enceladus there is a lot of water, but there is life, that is a good question. The research, which is in the news now, does not give us an answer to that question and perhaps we will not be certain about that question until we send a ship to analyze the material that the jets expel into space. Logically, if those jets expel water from the surface ocean of Enceladus, they can also expel some microorganisms that had the bad luck for them and the good luck for us to be trapped in those jets and be launched into space.

The new discovery, as I tell you, is not confirmation of the big question of whether there is life on Enceladus, but it is a very interesting clue. NASA's Cassini probe flew over the columns of water vapor that emanate from that interior ocean of Enceladus on multiple occasions, until it ended up disintegrating in the clouds of Saturn on September 15, 2017, it was a great ending.

Those responsible for the mission wanted to prevent the probe, now without fuel, from ending up impacting Titan or Enceladus, and that the possible terrestrial bacteria that had survived the trip and the impact would end up colonizing those moons and exterminating the potential life forms that could exist there. It would be like one of those extraterrestrial invasion movies, but on a bacterial level, in this case they would be terrestrials invading an extraterrestrial world.

The mission ended years ago, however, the data it collected is gigantic, it is a huge amount of information that continues to provide valuable clues to scientists, such as, for example, that the Casini probe has allowed researchers to determine the pH of Enceladus's ocean water and it turns out that it is highly alkaline water. From this they have been able to predict the complete mineral composition of the Enceladian Ocean, discovering that it presents advantages and disadvantages for any possible form of microbial life that could exist in it.

The pH of Enceladus's ocean is moderately high between 10.1 and 11.6, the pH scale measures the acidity or alkalinity of an element from one, which represents high acidity, to 14, which would mean high alkalinity and having about seven at the neutral point, therefore, the ocean of Enceladus is quite alkaline for comparison, the Earth's ocean has a pH of about eight and the pH of human blood is slightly alkaline. It goes from 7.35 to 7.45.

According to some statements by scientists specialized in these oceanic worlds, with this pH level it is more difficult, but certainly not impossible, to live in those conditions, since a high alkalinity of carbonates increases the solubility of calcium phosphate minerals, such as apatite, which, although it may not sound like it, is a fundamental component of our teeth and bones. In other words, if you only drank water from Enceladus, your teeth would end up dissolving after a while, although surely a lot. Before you would have serious problems in your internal organs, however, here on Earth there are microbes that tolerate and also thrive in waters with a similar pH range to that we found on Enceladus.

Beings who love alkaline waters benefit from the chemical reactions between water and rocks, where minerals and ions are produced that microbial life uses to obtain energy and sustenance. This gives us a clue as to where life may be on Enceladus, because the best place would not be the part of the water that touches the ice or the middle zone, but rather the bed of that ocean, the part of the water that touches the rocky surface and will surely have mud and an abundance of organic molecules.

The Cassini probe previously detected the presence of organic molecules in the jets that emanate from the moon. Enceladus is a small moon with great mysteries, although what amazes me most about it is that it is only one of many, perhaps the smallest. In recent years we are discovering signs that practically all the large icy moons in the solar system have an ocean under their icy surface. They may be large or small, but they all hold the keys to why life may have emerged on them.

The largest oceans would be in Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, which are satellites of Jupiter, and in Titan, satellite of Saturn, because although Titan has rivers and large lakes of hydrocarbons under the surface of water ice, there is also a large ocean of liquid water. Titan is a world of many possibilities. So many options, so many possibilities.

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