
Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost - yawz
http://www.newsweek.com/aliens-enceladus-saturn-icy-moon-porous-core-heat-702774
======
drewrv
If alien life were discovered within our solar system, I wonder what the
implications for the Drake Equation would be. Assuming panspermia is ruled
out, the fact that abiogenesis occured twice within a seemingly ordinary
system would imply life is incredibly common.

~~~
delecti
Well one factor would go up (planets with life 1>2) and another would go down
(planets with life developing intelligence 1>0.5), resulting in a wash. It
does move towards giving additional degrees of freedom on those terms though,
making the equation as a whole slightly less pseudo-science.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Depends on their intelligence if we find them, right? They might be
intelligent and tool-using, but hampered by their aquatic origins.

~~~
bochoh
Is is intriguing to me to consider the limitations of space travel if you were
an aquatic organism. Simply moving that much of any fluid versus empty "air"
space would make leaving your planet that much more difficult. That's not to
mention the inherent issues of electricity and developing circuits underwater.

~~~
dogma1138
Underwater technological civilization isn’t possible, tool making is very
limited, no fire, no complex chemistry, no real evolutionary path to a
technological advance society without uplifting.

While possibly there aren’t that many restrictions on where life can evolve
and even where can different levels of intelligence can evolve there are
likely quite a bit of restrictions on where and how technological intelligence
can evolve.

Which puts some restrictions or bias towards both biological/evolutionary
traits and as well as environmental ones.

While I think we’ll find life in very strange places eventually and life that
will be very strange any technological species we might encounter would be
something much more similar to us than to anything else.

~~~
debatem1
Why are you confident that underwater technical civilization isn't possible?

It would seem to me that techniques like hydraulics would emerge quickly, and
large pressure and temperature differentials over small distances are
considerably more common and easier to harness underwater than above.
Fabrication is certainly harder, but not impossibly so. Some weapons like
thrusting spears might be easier to make and more advantageous in the water
than on land, and those developed pretty early for us.

~~~
dogma1138
Because show me an evolutionary path into fine tool making and complex
chemistry.

Chemistry is virtually impossible underwater, were not talking about an
octopus using a stick even some birds use tools that's not exactly what we
would call a technological intelligence.

No fire, no smelting no metalworking, no complex materials.

~~~
StephenMelon
If you can’t do an experiment in your own environment, you improvise. Humans
have done experiments in space that couldn’t be done on earth, so an advanced
aquatic species could do experiments above the surface, given enough time,
intelligence and inclination.

Intelligence might also take different forms, so an ocean-sized equivalent of
a termite colony comprised of specialised molluscs that were collectively
intelligent and had selectively bred themselves into specialised roles for
millennia could achieve a great deal?

~~~
dogma1138
We’re talking here about very specific intelligence a technological one.

Humans can do experiments in space because we have the technology to do so,
show me an evolutionary path to technology capable of overcoming environmental
barriers without fire and chemistry.

~~~
debatem1
You're making three specific claims and have provided zero evidence: that it
is impossible to develop fire underwater, that it is impossible to develop
chemistry underwater, and that it is impossible to build a technological
civilization without these things. I say hogwash; show me the proof for your
claims.

Your proposed alternative is to play "what if" until either I come up with an
imaginary scenario that strikes your fancy or, more likely, you reject out of
hand anything brought to you and claim to be right by default. Well, that's
hogwash too. It's certainly no way to advance a scientific claim, let alone
three of them.

I'm particularly skeptical of the claim that you could not develop chemistry
underwater; it seems equally as implausible as saying that you could not
develop chemistry in air for exactly the same reasons.

~~~
autokad
"I'm particularly skeptical of the claim that you could not develop chemistry
underwater; it seems equally as implausible as saying that you could not
develop chemistry in air for exactly the same reasons."

what? you think its possible to develop fire under water? chemistry? have you
done any chemistry? what about electricity? (a huge but impossible one to do
under water)? I am trying really hard not to say something mean

~~~
Elv13
Thermite or alkaline metals will burn just fine under water. As long as you
have an oxidizer, some combustible and a source of energy to kickstart the
reaction, it will burn. Also, I don't see why fire is so important. It was
important for us to better digest food, that's a concidence, nothing else.

And so does electricity. If the water isn't saline (why would it be), then it
is as good as air from an isolation PoV. I did put a motherboard in mineral
oil at some point and it did work until the fan died. Other fluids that could
make life possible are also good at being non conductive.

Even in salt water, a circuit just has to be bigger or better isolated to
work. electricity takes the path of least resistance. Vast distances in salt
water vs a good conductor, at some point the good conductor will still win. We
have undersea cables since centuries and they work.

Then, about smelting and complex chemistry, hydrothermal vents provides both a
source of energy and of complex chemicals.

~~~
dogma1138
And how would you refine aluminium for thermite under water or refine highly
reactive alkaline metals?

People here come at it from the wrong point of view which is the application
of advanced technologies, expertise and knowledge applied to overcome
environmental challenges.

You need to look at it from an evolutionary point of view (both biological and
technical). Show me a feasible technological evolutionary path to our current
level of technology for a life form that is limited to living in a solvent
this can be water, ammonia, liquid hydrocarbons or anything else similar.

When I say technological life is likely to be very similar to us is not due to
lack of imagination, and this isn't just my own opinion.

Here are several other factors to account for the evolutionary path to a
technological society.

Gravity, no direct bounds on lower gravity other than the fact that low mass
planets will have trouble holding an atmosphere. Limits on the upper bound are
both biological very high gravity would restrict the development of fine
appendages which would restrict tool making, and in general when a fall from
any relatively small height could kill you it would likely force evolutionary
paths that could likely be against the development of complex technical
intelligence. This limit can be somewhat mitigated by atmospheric density that
would provide buoyancy some what countering some of the direct affects of
gravity but that's both limited and can impose limiting factors on it's own.

Gravity also would impose a limit on the feasibility of rockets, chemistry is
universal and the rocket equation combined with the available energy in
chemical fuels would impose a limit on how massive a planet can be from which
you could use rockets to go into space.

Biological attributes, fine motor skills are pretty much a must for fine tool
making which is a critical part of technical and biological advancements in
intelligence.

Sight is also likely a critical factor, while other types of sight than non
light, and non visible light might be present coverage of most of the visible
spectrum is likely going to be very common if not mandatory. The amount of
information you can gain from the and near visible spectrum is much higher
than any other forms of vision such as echo location.

That information is both needed for inference of underlying properties of
"things" as well as would serve as a catalyst for development of higher brain
functions.

And those are just a few examples, if you start looking at what conditions are
either mandatory, beneficial or detrimental to the evolution of a
technologically advanced species from both a biological and then
technical/societal aspect you would end up with a much more limited spectrum
of possible life forms and planets on which a species that can reach our own
level of technology can evolve.

Don't get me wrong a super intelligent organism spanning an entire planet that
you could debate the meaning of life with until the cold death of the universe
is possible, so is any other type of conscious or "philosophical"
intelligence, but these types of life forms won't be building rockets or
iPhones.

~~~
Elv13
> And how would you refine aluminium for thermite under water or refine highly
> reactive alkaline metals?

Refining aluminium is either done with the chemical baths process or
electrolysis. Electrolysis works equally well in dielectric gas or liquid.
Electricity can be generated under water, we do so on earth, it ain't hard.
The chemical baths process does not require an atmosphere, so it has no impact
if it's executed under water or above it. Remember, we use plenty of gas based
chemical processes and we live in a gas. There is no reasons it cannot happen
in liquid.

> Gravity: low gravity

Totally unrelated, waterworlds tend to have higher gravity. Buoyancy is also
unrelated to cognitive capacity. The average cognitive capacity is marine
mammals species is higher than the terrestrial one.

> Gravity: appendages

Octopuses appendages are better suited to manipulate objects while clinging on
to hard surfaces than our gravity based limbs. Their body is soft yet capable
of some level of rigidity on demand. It is perfectly adapted to low-G
interaction.

> Gravity also would impose a limit on the feasibility of rockets

You are trying to force various things into your "technological species". I am
limiting my argumentation to species capable of industrial scale civilizations
(type 1). But assuming I ignore that and bite your sofism (as I did for fire,
which was an equally invalid proposition). For highly horizontal lunches, you
need to accelerate to reach the escape velocity delta-v, not fight gravity.
It's harder, but not impossible, to do so in thick atmospheres with high
gravity and heavy liquid payloads. Also, if the hypothetical planet had a
thick molecular oxygen free atmosphere, a direct cycle nuke engines would work
very, very well. You could accelerate to ~12km/s in high atmosphere is an
ablative shield before starting the chemical rocket (necessary only for the
[orbital] plane correction. That's half of what you need to reach Uranus or
Neptune escape velocity. So it would reach EV in any waterworlds (higher
gravity cause high pressure chiemicals to form instead of water, we know
nothing about this type of chemistry beside "diamonds exists", we have no clue
if life can develop in >= 1GPa). And before you say 12km/s is impossible, no,
it's totally possible if your direct cycle run at a few hundreds thoundsand
degrees. We are not crazy enough to try because such radiation kills us.
Assuming the organism is better suited to cope with it and the fact that water
would shield against most radiation anyway, it becomes a very viable way to
reach extreme speeds.

> Biological attributes, fine motor skills are pretty much a must for fine
> tool making which is a critical part of technical and biological
> advancements in intelligence.

Yes, they also happen to evolve in any fluid, not just gases. Even Lobsters
can be considered to have fine motor skills. Cephalopods have exceptional ones
even compared to us.

> Sight

Sight is unrelated to the viscosity of the fluid. Different wavelenghts have
different absorption rates when crossing matter. We are transparent to a wide
range of the EM spectrum and air is opaque to an equally large one. The "best
sight on earth" prize is awarded to some deep water shrimp species. Also,
hearing, sight and smell can be combined in a "introspecting close environment
without contact" category. We use hundreds of different type of sensors to
perform that task, it is not limited to those 3. The animal kingdom evolved
about a dozen such senses. Sonars/Lidars/Radars/Masdars and electrical field
organs can replace sights and smell respectively.

So all that to prove that the attributes you attach to intelligence have
absolutely no relation with either intelligence itself or the viscosity or
air.

edit: s/MPa/GPa/

------
_rpd
Referenced paper ...

Powering prolonged hydrothermal activity inside Enceladus

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0289-8.epdf?refer...](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0289-8.epdf?referrer_access_token=K_BkPYrBbon6dJyfs_jGxNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PnT-
YwADrnlJWwzTHOzYnTbdXadW1wQ8NGgNwzlTvVlCJMeiwq0tAEDj68JLuBYSpVVqPnGDKTQUU8-qQJIG0wkQmiMOgQJZxV-O0lC9zO9w5E2dfTQV2WBGqS26n4bCJHOrhoJTPyffAYW-
ujEcpGherVvbvt88bz9IhWkzTB7AYDiQL35Y3ThRLtwWNLDvc3ACxDOsxW2nHxMywL-Y4C&tracking_referrer=www.newsweek.com)

------
mirimir
I'm reminded of the argument[0] that conscious beings that evolved on worlds
like this will be very freaked by the discovery of stuff above the ice. Seeing
planets and stars, we humans have always had some sense that there's more to
the Universe than Earth.

0) _The Killing Star_ by George Zebrowski and Charles Pellegrino

~~~
zitterbewegung
I don’t think that’s true since we have only recently figured out what stars
really are (last 2 thousand years) .

~~~
Brockenstein
Yeah, I doubt upon discovering a wider universe most beings are going to
follow the path of the Krikket in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Otherwise every discovery would have the potential to discombobulate them
under the right circumstances.

~~~
manachar
Humanity often has periods of instability following major discoveries that
unseat orthodox ideals. An argument can be made that much of the cultural
instability in the modern US and its animosity to science can be rooted in an
"allergic" reaction to the ideas of evolution and a greater understanding of
just how old and vast our universe actually is.

Personally, such an argument would be a bit simplistic, but you'd be a fool to
ignore how discombobulating evolution has been to much of Evangelical America.
People who believe they are the center of universe tend to find it difficult
to accept evidence to the contrary. To use another literary reference, there
are a lot of warty bliggens in the world.

~~~
Brockenstein
Well going even beyond that. There's entire populations of people barely
living above the stone age, not to mention uncontacted tribes still out there
in the world. It provides a fascinating spectrum of experiences.

I guess my point is any large enough group of beings will have a variety of
responses ranging from embracing new ideas and information wholeheartedly or
rejecting them out of fear and ignorance and every possible combination of
response in between. And it can be tricky to figure out which sub-group should
represent the whole in these sort of blanket statements about how "they" would
"feel" about an arbitrary bit of knowledge that they couldn't have foreseen
discovering.

------
crusso
Is there a protocol for looking for life in an environment like Enceladus that
would sufficiently guarantee sterility of the probe?

It seems that guaranteeing sterility would be sufficiently impossible to
render Enceladus permanently unapproachable.

~~~
saagarjha
There's a job at NASA for that. It's called the Planetary Protection Office:
[https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov](https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov)
(relevant xkcd what-if: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/](https://what-
if.xkcd.com/117/))

------
foreigner
Why do these articles always assume that if we find anything it will just be
microbial? There could be anything at all down there.

~~~
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
Most of life's time on earth was single celled (life started ~4.1 Billion
years ago, multi-cellular ~1.7 Billion years ago). If the world wasn't filled
with O2 or sexual reproduction didn't start life on earth could still be
single celled.

------
FlyingSideKick
Planetary science programs need a significant boost in funding so that they
can perform at least two flagship missions per decade. Missions to Europa,
Enceladus and Titan to look for life should be a top priority for NASA.

~~~
foolfoolz
it blows my mind we have landed on Titan and sent back photos

------
p1mrx
Imagine that there's an intelligent civilization living down there. One day,
they develop the technology to drill through the ice, and emerge to
discover... an entire universe on the other side.

~~~
dmix
I'm curious what limitations being an underwater species, especially a
subterranean one, would have on the development of intelligence or even an
advanced society.

------
EthereumDublin
Apparently the ocean on Enceladus is kept warm due to geothermal heat. And
that hear is accessible to the water because the ocean’s crust is very porous.
Which naturally leads us to ideas like geothermal vents that may have been the
source of life on Earth.

------
dogma1138
Hopefully we won’t bring back Kelvin.

