{"id":98505,"date":"2025-10-02T06:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T06:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/98505\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T06:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T06:21:10","slug":"ocean-on-saturn-moon-ticks-all-the-boxes-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/98505\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean on Saturn moon \u2018ticks all the boxes\u2019 for life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The ocean hidden under the icy shell of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus harbours complex organic molecules, a study said on Wednesday, offering further evidence that the small world could have all the right ingredients to host extraterrestrial life.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Just 500km (310 miles) wide and invisible to the naked eye, the white, scar-covered Enceladus is one of hundreds of moons orbiting the sixth planet from the sun.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">For a long time, scientists believed Enceladus was too far away from the sun \u2013 and therefore too cold \u2013 to be habitable.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Then, the Cassini space probe flew past the moon several times during a 2004-2017 trip to Saturn and its rings, discovering evidence that a vast saltwater ocean is concealed under the moon\u2019s kilometres thick layer of ice.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A diagram illustrates the possible interior of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus in April 2014. Photo: Nasa\/JPL-Caltech\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/e3eb7afe-0584-471f-b19a-43e36f63d3d3_33250c02.jpg\" title=\"A diagram illustrates the possible interior of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus in April 2014. Photo: Nasa\/JPL-Caltech\"\/>A diagram illustrates the possible interior of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus in April 2014. Photo: Nasa\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Since then, scientists have been sifting through the data collected by Cassini, revealing that the ocean has many of the elements thought to be needed to host life, including salt, methane, carbon dioxide and phosphorus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ocean hidden under the icy shell of Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus harbours complex organic molecules, a study said&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[38822,25123,62919,27604,62926,18,41498,28434,62924,62921,19,17,62918,62922,1434,62920,62923,133,62925,451],"class_list":{"0":"post-98505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-afp","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-caroline-freissinet","11":"tag-cassini","12":"tag-cosmic-dust-analyzer","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-enceladus","15":"tag-european-space-agency","16":"tag-frank-postberg","17":"tag-free-university-of-berlin","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-nature-astronomy","21":"tag-nozair-khawaja","22":"tag-saturn","23":"tag-saturns-e-ring","24":"tag-saturns-moon","25":"tag-science","26":"tag-south-pole","27":"tag-space"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}