
Is it Snowing Microbes on Enceladus?  - J3L2404
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/27mar_enceladus/
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molbioguy
Off topic (sort of), but this reminded me of 2001/2010. Arthur C. Clark was on
pretty much on target. In 2010 he predicted we'd find life on an icy moon of
the outer solar system. He happened to posit it was Europa (around Jupiter)
but then the original novel had the mission flying to Saturn. The movie and
sequels changed it to Jupiter because Saturn was hard for the special effects.
Anyway, pretty darn impressive sci-fi speculation that might come true. And
now back to our original discussion....

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Sodaware
I really hope that companies like SpaceX reduce the cost of space travel to
the point where we can send out more probes to check things like this. It's
early days for private space travel, but I think the next 10-15 years are
going to be very exciting.

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huxley
Not sure that they'll help much since most of the costs aren't launch related:

"The total cost of [the Cassini-Hughes] scientific exploration mission is
about US$3.26 billion, including $1.4 billion for pre-launch development, $704
million for mission operations, $54 million for tracking and $422 million for
the launch vehicle."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini–Huygens>

Space probes are already cheap for what they accomplish. For comparison, we
could have sent about 45 Cassini probes for what has been spent on the
International Space Station (all costs in).

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maaku
I work for NASA in a planetary science organization, so let me say this: cost
accounting of space missions is unique to the way NASA/ESA operates. Much of
that cost is tied up in things like paying researchers and graduate students
to do studies during the decades of time between missions, obscene university
overheads, re-inventing the wheel with a new spacecraft design for every
mission, prime contractors who attempt to _maximize_ the number of
subcontractors and resulting complexity because that awards them points in the
selection committee, etc.

Private industry could do it way, way cheaper. SpaceX could probably build and
launch 45 Cassini probes for what cost to do Cassini–Huygens.

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huxley
Let's see how things go, thus far SpaceX has proved they can get stuff into
orbit but they aren't super-cheap yet.

Private industry can do a lot of things but a Cassini probe mission for $71
million all in seems unlikely in the near future.

NASA has a contract with SpaceX for 12 supply missions at $1.6 billion while
NASA says a shuttle launch was about $450 million (but that figure probably
doesn't include all the costs).

So SpaceX at this stage is at about 25-33% the cost of a space shuttle
mission, but that's still a long way until we get to "45 Cassini probes" for
$3.2 billion.

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joeconway
"...And we have found that aside from water and organic material.."

Surely finding organic material is an incredibly big deal, yet it's mentioned
in passing. I feel as though I'm missing something fundamental here.

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drostie
It used to be the case that life was considered as some sort of fluid stuff
which was added to the Elements to turn the 'inorganic' material into
'organic' material -- the low-level chemical distinction between 'nonliving'
and 'living'. In Latin the life-fluid stuff was called _vis vitalis_ and this
view was called Vitalism.

What you are missing is that in 1828 a dude named Friedrich Wöhler took two
indisputably 'inorganic' compounds, put them together, heated them up on a
stove, let them cool, and got an indisputably 'organic' compound called urea,
which disproved vitalism and established that 'organic' is a relatively
arbitrary condition having nothing to do with life per se. Today it basically
means "It contains carbon in it, and it wasn't one of the carbon-containing
substances which were so plentiful in non-living places that vitalists
considered them inorganic." The list of exceptions is not too long, but it
dates back to this old philosophy. Organic no longer means 'living' because of
the disproof of vitalism.

The More You Know.

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joeconway
Thank you, very well explained.

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jwuphysics
Is it snowing organic compounds? Probably. Is it snowing complex organic
compounds? Let's go see. Is it snowing microbes? At this point, we're leaving
the realm of scientific evidence and throwing out sensational headlines. I'm
not saying that it's a particularly poor speculation, but I personally think
the article name could have been more accurate.

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kristianp
I agree. Nasa makes a lot of searching for life in various places, but I
reckon it's something for media soundbites than the actual reason they explore
places. For example, they're still searching for life on Mars. Google "nasa
life on mars" for examples.

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tocomment
It sounds like they can't figure out where all of the heat is coming from. Is
it possible this moon is partially heated by radioactive decay like the earth
is?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient>

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orbitingpluto
Tidal heating is likely the largest contributor.

Tidal friction explains why Io is the most volanic body in the solar system
and its deformation.

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scribu
This is so exciting! and I don't really know why. These are just microbes
we're talking about.

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RyanMcGreal
Life appearing independently on two different planets in the same solar system
dramatically jacks up the odds that life appeared somewhere else in a universe
made up of 100 billion galaxies, each of which contains 100 billion star
systems.

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wtracy
If we find life elsewhere in our solar system, my money is on it sharing a
common ancestor with life on Earth. We already know that rocks ejected by
meteorite impacts can wind up on another planet. It's not too much of a
stretch to imagine some spores coming along for the ride.

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maeon3
We need to monetize the investigation of Enceladus. Bringing back alien life
from another planet would give us the opportunity to adapt their sensors and
tools into our technology. Could we patent the blueprint of the alien life to
reward the company that brings it back here?

Could the government say: "whatever company brings back an alien life form
from enceladus can receive just compensation for any company who uses it for
50 years?"

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ars
You are assuming that:

a: There is life there.

b: That the life has some kind of economic value.

c: That there is a world wide government that could enforce this.

d: That it's morally OK to patent life.

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squarecat
Incidentally, Spewing Plumes is (now) the name of my (nonexistent) band.

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squarecat
Wow -- apparently as karma goes up, humor goes down.

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squarecat
No really, please bury this: \- You expended energy clicking it \- I get the
satisfaction of righteous indignation \- In 12 months, my bitterness is
justified by the meaninglessness of it all

