Discovery shows Saturn's moon Enceladus has everything needed for life

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Discovery shows Saturn's moon Enceladus has everything needed for life
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Saturn's moon Enceladus is considered one of the most promising places to search for alien life. Now scientists have detected a key ingredient: phosphorous

The rarest element critical to life as we know it, phosphorus, has for the first time been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth, spewed out from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

Phosphates, or compounds containing phosphorous, are essential to key components of life on Earth, such as DNA, RNA, and cell membranes. Of the six elements required for life—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—phosphorus “is by far the least common in the universe,” saysPlease be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

Previous models of Enceladus and other icy ocean worlds were divided on whether these hidden seas possessed significant amounts of phosphates dissolved within them."Phosphates don't like to dissolve in water, so it's in principle harder to find in oceans," Postberg explains. Of 345 ice grains from Saturn's E-ring that Cassini examined between 2004 to 2008, the scientists detected nine grains with phosphates.

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