Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon, has become one of the most promising sites for the search for life.
Beneath its surface lies a global and salty ocean, with liquid water, heat, and elements like phosphorus and complex hydrocarbons, conditions that could favor biological processes.
New Finding: Heat Loss at Both Poles
A team from the University of Oxford, the Southwest Research Institute, and the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, whose results were published in Science Advances, discovered that Saturn’s moon loses heat from both the south and north poles.
Until now, it was thought that thermal activity was concentrated in the south, famous for its geysers. The finding suggests that Enceladus is not a simple block of ice but possesses a stable energy system capable of sustaining its internal ocean.
Energy and Sustainability of the Internal Ocean
The study used data from NASA’s Cassini probe, which in 2005 and 2015 measured temperatures at the north pole. The records showed that the surface was seven kelvins above expected, indicating heat coming from the underground ocean.
- The heat flow rises to 46 milliwatts per square meter, equivalent to two-thirds of the heat loss in the Earth’s crust.
- The total loss reaches 35 gigawatts, similar to the energy of 66 million solar panels or 10,500 wind turbines.
- Adding both poles, the figure reaches 54 gigawatts, close to the energy generated by tidal heating due to Saturn’s gravity.
This energy balance suggests that Enceladus’s ocean could remain liquid for long periods, an essential condition for life.
Implications for the Search for Life
“Enceladus is a key target in the search for life beyond Earth, and understanding the long-term availability of its energy is crucial to determining if it can harbor life,” explained researcher Georgina Miles, the study’s lead author.
Dr. Carly Howett added:
“It is truly exciting that this new result supports the long-term sustainability of Enceladus, a fundamental component for the development of life.”
The data also allowed updating the estimate of the ice layer’s thickness: between 20 and 23 km at the north pole and an average of 25 to 28 km across the moon, slightly more than in previous calculations.
Ocean Worlds as a Scientific Priority
The case of Enceladus reinforces the need for extended missions to ocean worlds, capable of revealing secrets decades after data collection.
The combination of liquid water, heat, and chemical elements makes this moon one of the most promising scenarios for finding extraterrestrial life within the Solar System.
The possibility of life existing beyond Earth is one of science’s great questions. More and more researchers agree that somewhere in the infinite universe, there could be at least simple forms of life, like bacteria proliferating in underwater geysers or in interstellar clouds.
The existence of complex life is more difficult to imagine, but it is not ruled out that it may have emerged, exists, or could appear in the future.
