Enceladus, as seen by spacecraft Cassini (NASA/JPL)
Planetary scientists today announced their findings that Enceladus, the ninth innermost moon of Saturn, has a subcrustal liquid ocean and also contains traces of hydrocarbon compounds. From these they speculate that Enceladus might be yet another abode of life beyond the earth.
On March 12, 2008, the spacecraft Cassini (a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency) made its closest approach of Enceladus and actually flew through the jets of ice that it had earlier detected emanating from Enceladus' south polar region. (These jets are also the source of Saturn's E ring.) Recently, Andrew Coates and colleagues discovered that these jets contain water anions (negatively charged particles), a finding associated on earth with waterfalls or ocean spray. The Coates team also found hydrocarbon anions and other anions, leading them to conclude that Enceladus had all the ingredients of life: water, carbon, and energy. They published their findings in the journal Icarus, as reported today in The Daily Mail (London).
Enceladus-Cassini publicity poster (NASA/JPL)
Enceladus is not the first solar-system body (other than earth) to enjoy speculation as an abode of life. The planet Mars, of course, was once thought to be an abode not only of life but even of civilization in the early part of the twentieth century. More recently, Europa, the sixth innermost moon of Jupiter, is now thought to hold a subcrustal ocean as well, on the evidence of its magnetic field and density. So concerned were the mission controllers of the Galileo mission (that studied Jupiter as Cassini studies Saturn today) that they deliberately crashed Galileo into Jupiter to avoid having it crash into Europa and perhaps rupture its icy crust and "contaminate" the ocean.
If life is present on either Europa or Enceladus, that could happen in only two ways: either it arose there, or fell on each body from outside. The favored theory for life arising on a body is abiogenesis--the spontaneous generation of life from non-life. That, however, has never been observed in the wild, nor has anyone presented a satisfactory explanation of how the information contained in a single cell nucleus, information easily equivalent to a hundred Libraries of Congress, could have, in essence, written itself.
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Jean Dominique Cassini (Julien Léopold Boilly)
Some conventional scientists understand this, and so have developed the theory of panspermia (literally, seeding everywhere). The classic theory states that the earth passed through a comet's tail and was thus "seeded," and if something like that really happened to the earth, then it could have happened to Europa and Enceladus.
But a third possibility exists that could even explain an eventual finding of life on either body. If God created life on earth, then He would not have had reason to create it elsewhere. But the earth also once had a subcrustal ocean, according to Walt Brown's hydroplate theory, and the rupture of the earth's crust released that ocean in the Global Flood. In the process, says Brown, large quantities of water and mud, representing one percent of that ocean, escaped into space. This mixture of water and dirt could have carried with it a corresponding quantity of microbes, easily including enough to "colonize" Europa and/or Enceladus--or, for that matter, Mars. Thus the classical panspermia theory might not be as outlandish as originally supposed--except that life did not come to the earth by that method, but went out from the earth.
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Comments
I am a firm believer that life does not exist any where by accident. God is the creator of all life and places it where He pleases. I enjoy reading your articles and the way in which you present the facts. Our universe is full mysteries, mysteries that only God has the answer to.
GAAAAAAAAAAAGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Hydroplate theory--seriously? And the moon is made of green cheese--that's my theory and I'm sticking with it despite all evidence to the contrary (cuz we all know the moon landings are fake).
fascinating article, nobody really knows everything is a theory,it is still fascinating though
When I read your articles I realize how much I don't know! :)
Wow, after reading this article i am truly convinced that you are a total narcissist. The odds that humanity holds the singular honor of being the only sentient life, or any life for all that matter, in the universe is highly improbable. There are at least 10 to the 23 power stars in the universe (1000000000000000000000000 stars.) To say that Sol is the only sector in space capable of sustaining life is simply asinine. Your only rational supporting your claim is that God didn't need to place life elsewhere, because he put life here. I could spend eons picking apart that flaw-ridden argument, but suffice to say that I have long since stop believing in my imaginary friends whose existence can neither be proven or whose divine claims cannot be substaniated. I'll end with my favorite quote by Einstein "Don't confuse the limits of your mind for the limits of the universe."
Your articles are so thought provoking. There is a lot out there in the universe and as we don't visit the other planets, we don't know if there is life as we know on Earth on those other planets.
Very good article and as Sherrie says, Our universe is full of mysteries that only God has the answer to. Deut. 29:29 "...the secret things belong to God."
The theory of evolution and spontaneous life is just that - a theory, which means it can't be proven!
"The theory of evolution and spontaneous life is just that - a theory, which means it can't be proven!"
First of all Judy, "Hydroplate theory", is not a theory at all...it is a very old hypothesis based on conjecture and has no supporting facts to back it up whatsoever.
A theory in science is an explanation of observable facts, not conjecture, not WAG, but FACTS. Evolution falls into the category of "theory" because it is the best explanation of how life, in its current form came to be. Despite what Terry wants you to believe, it is a very easy theory to prove wrong - simply find me complex fossils in a layer of strata older than a layer in which simple fossils reside and bingo...you will have disproven evolution. The fact is, we have uncovered countless fossils and not a single find has ever found such an anomoly.
Before you discount me because I am a scientist, let me just say that I would LOVE to be the one to find such a site. Fame and riches would be the result.
Once again Terry, I'm still hoping you'll respond to the question I posed to you ---
If someone came up to and said - I'm going to conduct a science experiment but it must abide by the following principle:
"No evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record,"
Would you expect their research to be objective or biased towards an ideological end? And if they found contrary evidence, would you expect them to accept it or find any possible reason to reject something that violates their founding principle?
So how about it Terry?
So what is the next step? Is NASA or Europe planning any new missions to these places to gather more evidence? Or are we waiting now for Boeing or someone else to do it?
Enjoyable. Anything is possible with the Divine at the wheel.
@Rufus -- Well, I guess the next step is to wait either for Boeing to launch a mission on their own, by way of showing what they can do, or for our society to lighten the tax burden so that someone can start a non-profit foundation that can run its own space program. The present government of the United States has canceled all future efforts to send crews of astronauts into space, and whether they will launch many more uncrewed probes is anyone's guess.
@Keith--May I remind you that I gave you your reply in the comment space of the very first article where you raised it. Go back to that article and read my reply, and *then* talk about it some more.
Commercial access to space is long overdue (re: Boeing, go back and watch 2001: A space odyssey for what should have been, in terms of access to NEO).
The perpetually underfunded Constellation program would only get us back to the Moon by 2030--by then the Chinese should have a nice hotel there.
Obama did not come up with this revision--it was developed by a commission that looked critically at the mess that pretended to get us back to the moon by the end of the decade. Google to see how Buzz Aldrin thinks we should proceed--someone who has been there.
NASA should focus on developing revolutionary technologies--having them ferry people to the space station makes as much sense as having them be in charge of the launching of every communications satellite.
I am intrigued that a religious fundamentalist is interested in exploring Enceladus for life, but the present, vaguest NASA-ESA plans would put a probe's arrival well after the Rapture/Tribulation, right?--so why bother?
Actually Terry, you didn't answer my question, you deflected. The question is simple...do you think that someone, be they a creationist, geologist, astrophysicist or whomever can provide an unbiased interpretation of any evidence if their fundamental premise is that...
"No evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record,"
Ahhh. The believers. Make me giggle every time I read some of their rationale.
O.K., let's take this one by one
"The rocks were not floating on the subterranean water like a boat; rather the water was in a sealed chamber. Water or even air in a sealed chamber will support a large amount of weight, that would other wise sink through it. It would be more like a water bed than a boat. Furthermore, Brown was clear that "About half the water now in the oceans was once in interconnected chambers about 10 miles below the earth’s surface."
Does Brown have evidence for this or is it speculation? Water 10 Miles below the earths surface would be superheated. If released into and above the atmosphere, it would gain additional heat when falling back to earth. Noah would have been cooked.
"Being at 10 miles the temperature would be so high that when released the water would have fried the Earth. This assumes current conditions, on the pre Flood world. It is likely that the current levels of heat inside the Earth were generated by the events of the Flood; furthermore the vaporization that would occur during the eruption due to decompression would have cooled it as well; hence the water would not have been too hot."
- This is pure conjecture and poorly thought out conjecture at that. Vaporization would not have cooled the water and when released into the atmosphere, such a mass of heated water would in fact have retained or even gained additional heat.
@Keith -- What you said above, about a mass of water actually gaining heat as it vaporized, violates basic principles of physical chemistry. Haven't you ever heard of the concepts "heat of fusion" and "heat of vaporization"? Don't you know that a substance has to gain a certain amount of energy in order to transform from liquid to vapor? Now where do you think that energy is going to come from? From the surroundings, of course. If this were not the case, then an applied phenomenon like refrigeration would be impossible--and that refrigerator in your home or apartment would have blown up, with enough energy to blow you and your house (or the building) up with it.
@Jeremy -- Have you any idea how slim are the fault tolerances of life? Did you know that if the earth were any closer to (or further away from) the sun, life on earth would not be sustainable? Did you know that the nebula theory of the formation of the solar system is actually a one-off scenario, said to apply to our solar system *alone*?
The stars were set in their positions in the sky for our benefit, to mark the seasons. Furthermore, cosmological relativity tells us that every one of those stars is a lot older than our own--time was dilated in our galaxy, and tremendously so. If any of those far-off objects were inhabited, why have we not long ago been conquered? (But--oh, yes!--Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, in 1973, thought that an advanced civilization fired a brace of missiles, each laden with bacteria and blue-green algae, hither and yon. One crashed on earth, and we are its by-product.)
@Keith -- I deflected nothing. I reserve my right to object to, and refuse to answer, any question that is, as lawyers like to say, incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. "Incompetent" means "the answer wouldn't prove anything." And how can the answer to a question prove anything if it describes a situation that is demonstrably false?
@Terry "And how can the answer to a question prove anything if it describes a situation that is demonstrably false?"
You could try actually demonstrating that the situation is false. As of right now AIG, CSE, and CMI all have statements of faith on their websites with wording nearly identical to Keith's question.
You've asserted that the AIG statement of faith is out of date, but haven't provided any evidence of that that I've seen.
So how can we trust any of these three groups to objectively evaluate evidence when they believe that "No evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record"?
@KarateMonkey - "You could try actually demonstrating that the situation is false. As of right now AIG, CSE, and CMI all have statements of faith on their websites with wording nearly identical to Keith's question."
No, they have not! At issue is the interpretation of the evidence--and what constitutes "evidence" and what does not.
Yes they do!
AIG statement of faith, section 4, point 6: "By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record."
CSE statement of faith first paragraph: "No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and science, can be valid if it contradicts Scripture."
CMI statement of faith, section D, point 6: "By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record."
I can't include links, but these are found under the about us section of the web page for each group.
Have it your way if you like. It's a difference of interpretation, but the difference is that one side attempts to understand reality while the other is attempting to rationalize already held beliefs.
Isn't it time for the human race to grow up and leave religion behind us, where it belongs?
I appreciate all aspects of imagination and human motivation to achieve the impossible. However, I disagree with the financial strides that our government invests money into when we have homeless Veterans and children without medical care here in our country. Nice read but, what extent should we go to when our peoples aren't being taken care of first?
@KarateMonkey - Just reviewing some old comments that I hadn't had a chance to look at. Your rebuttal to Terry's "Statement of Faith" denial was very impressive. It's difficult to lie about something when that lie is exposed by the very people you are trying to defend.
Hopefully Terry will be more selective with the 'evidence' and the underlying intention of the 'interpretations' of said 'evidence' in the future.
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