Thursday, March 09, 2006

'To seek out new life...'

This is pretty exciting stuff. Scientists may have discovered evidence of water geysers on one of Saturn’s icy moons.

This greatly enhanced and colorized image from the Cassini spacecraft shows a faint plume of ice crystals and water vapor rising hundreds of miles from the surface of Enceladus.

Evidence of water in a liquid form puts Enceladus on the short list f places within the solar system most likely to have extraterrestrial life.

If Enceladus does harbor life, it probably consists of microbes or other primitive organisms capable of living in extreme conditions, scientists say. But hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere, right?

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