{"id":299521,"date":"2025-11-22T11:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/299521\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T11:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:37:08","slug":"saturn-never-before-seen-organic-molecules-discovered-in-enceladus-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/299521\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturn: never-before-seen organic molecules discovered in Enceladus’ ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

New substances have been identified that would indicate ongoing chemical (or biochemical) activity in the ocean of Enceladus, Saturn\u2019s icy moon.<\/p>\n

A group of researchers sifted through the data collected during one of the most daring flybys of the Cassini probe: a very rapid passage just 21 kilometers from the surface of Enceladus, Saturn\u2019s icy moon, through a cloud of tiny grains of ice expelled from its underground ocean.<\/p>\n

Is there life? From that foray, a new analysis now reveals something extraordinary: never-before-seen organic compounds in plumes spewing from fractures in the moon\u2019s icy shell. In addition to the molecules already known, scientists have identified a number of new substances that may indicate chemical \u2014 or even biochemical \u2014 activity taking place deep in Enceladus\u2019 ocean.<\/p>\n

Published on Nature Astronomythe findings mark a crucial step toward confirming the existence of active organic chemistry beneath the surface of the moon, a type of process capable of generating molecules critical to life as we know it on Earth.<\/p>\n

\"Saturn-Cassini\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Organic molecules. Until now, scientists had been able to analyze organic compounds preserved in the grains of the E ring (the planet has seven main ones classified from A to G and various others) of Saturn, often altered by space radiation. But this time the researchers were able to study \u201cfresh\u201d particles, ejected from the ocean just minutes before impact with Cassini\u2019s Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had previously identified organic compounds in years-old grains, potentially modified by the harsh space environment,\u201d explains Nozair Khawaja of Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, lead author of the study. \u00abThese new compounds, however, come directly from the ocean of Enceladus and were analyzed practically as soon as they were formed\u00bb. Co-author Frank Postberg, also from Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, emphasizes that the discovery confirms that the complex organic molecules found in the E ring \u201care not simply the result of long exposure to space, but are indeed present in the moon\u2019s ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impact. The credit goes above all to the flyby in 2008, when the probe \u2013 launched at over 18 kilometers per second \u2013 passed through a plume of ice and steam. The impact shattered the grains into a cloud of fragments and ions that his mass spectrometer could analyze with great precision.<\/p>\n

Scientists were thus able to examine tiny particles, smaller than a flu virus, and identify organic compounds never seen before in Enceladus\u2019 plumes: esters, aliphatic and cyclic ethers, some with double bonds in their structure.<\/p>\n

Molecules which, together with the aromatic ones containing nitrogen and oxygen already confirmed, could constitute the building blocks for more complex chemical reactions, of great interest for astrobiology.<\/p>\n

The search for life. The findings strengthen the idea that Enceladus\u2019 ocean is not just a reservoir of liquid water, but a dynamic environment where advanced organic chemistry may be present. In short, a context that could significantly narrow the field of research for life forms in the solar system.<\/p>\n

After that flyby, Cassini \u2014 operated by NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory \u2014 continued to explore Saturn and its moons for nearly a decade, leaving us a wealth of data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New substances have been identified that would indicate ongoing chemical (or biochemical) activity in the ocean of Enceladus,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,49678,95244,38270,134588,21231,26608,49304,66],"class_list":["post-299521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-discovered","tag-enceladus","tag-molecules","tag-neverbeforeseen","tag-ocean","tag-organic","tag-saturn","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}