Is there really life in the ocean under Enceladus' ice? American expert: There are probably giant unknown creatures.

There is a very formal and important branch of astronomy called "Astrobiology". Many people may not know this name, but its research topic and project are known all over the world-exploring and looking for extraterrestrial life.

When most people talk about alien life, they will directly associate it with aliens. In fact, the concept of extraterrestrial life is very broad. It not only refers to extraterrestrial intelligent life, but also includes all life from microorganisms to complex creatures. As long as it is found outside the earth, it can be called extraterrestrial life.

Since the birth of astrobiology, one of its core research focuses is Enceladus, which is a very humble star in the solar system. There is only one reason. On this planet, there is likely to be real extraterrestrial life, and the probability is extremely high. This is not a joke, but an important knowledge of the mainstream scientific community in the world.

Enceladus, the sixth largest satellite of Saturn, was discovered by humans as early as 1789. It is only 500 kilometers in diameter and covered with thick ice. When astronomers observed it before, because they observed that there were often "feathers" spewing out on its surface (popularly speaking, it was similar to the formation mechanism of fountains), so they suspected that there was an unknown subglacial ocean hidden under its thick ice.

This moment attracted the attention of all astrologers at that time, because if this "ocean under the ice" is confirmed to exist, then Enceladus is likely to have life, because the ocean is the cradle of life.

265438+At the beginning of the 20th century, the Cassini Saturn probe jointly launched by NASA and ESA finally reached Saturn's orbit after a long journey of seven years. Its most important task is to find evidence of life on Enceladus, but there is none.

Cassini spacecraft has been on mission in Enceladus for more than ten years. In 20 17, on its last observation mission before it ran out of energy and crashed into Saturn, it passed through the "plume" ejected by Enceladus and detected its composition, bringing back an invaluable evidence to mankind with its life-the composition data of the "plume" ejected under Enceladus' ice, which confirmed the existence of the ocean under Enceladus' ice.

This invaluable data has crossed the long distance of1500 million kilometers at the speed of light and returned to the earth. After receiving this data, NASA was ecstatic and couldn't wait to hold a press conference in the early morning to officially announce to the world that Enceladus is likely to have extraterrestrial life!

The topic of Enceladus' life has aroused heated discussion in the scientific community. Scientists are very enthusiastic. Not only astronomers speculated, but biologists also joined in the discussion. Up to now, there are basically two mainstream views.

The first one thinks that Enceladus, if there is life, is probably still in the initial stage of its birth-the category of microorganisms or simple organisms.

According to the analysis of the detection data, Enceladus' sub-ice ocean currently has three essential elements for life: heat source, liquid water, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon.

Liquid water and elements don't need to be elaborated, everyone can understand, and the heat source will be discussed.

Heat source refers to the source of continuous heating, which can provide the necessary conditions for the birth of life-sufficient temperature.

It is difficult to breed life in the extremely cold environment of several hundred degrees below zero, because the temperature is too low and the molecular activities are inactive, so life is not easy to appear.

But Enceladus is found at present, and there are few planets with geological activities in the solar system (others are Earth, Io, Triton and so on). ), which fully shows that there is a continuous heating heat source inside Enceladus. This heat source not only melts the ice under Enceladus' ice layer, but also provides enough temperature for the birth of life, which is the key to the possible existence of life on Enceladus.

In fact, there is a similar environment in the deep sea of the earth, such as near some active craters in the deep sea of the Pacific Ocean. Underwater, without light, high temperature and high pressure are typical characteristics of this environment. Near these deep-sea craters, scientists have found that there is still life. Although most of them are simple or even microbes, they are really life, not stones.

The ecological environment near the ocean heat source under the ice of Enceladus is very similar to that near the deep-sea crater of the earth, so the first batch of scientists believe that if there is life on Enceladus, then the form of life should be dominated by microorganisms or simple organisms.

This view should be said to be a reasonable speculation, but it was opposed by another school of NASA scholars represented by Professor Connor. Davis, because they have more reasonable analysis and inference.

Professor Davis believes that if Enceladus has produced life, its life form is likely to have developed to a relatively advanced level of marine life.

In fact, they also produced very strong evidence-the comparison between Enceladus and the earth's oceans.

At present, in the process of exploring the origin of life on earth, paleontologists find that life on earth was born much earlier than we thought. The unearthed paleontological fossils show that blue-green algae microorganisms appeared on the earth as early as 3.5 billion years ago.

The earth began to form 4.6 billion years ago. At first, it was just a huge ball of molten magma, and it began to cool after hundreds of millions of years. After cooling, primitive oceans began to appear on the earth, about 3.5-3.9 billion years ago. In other words, when the primitive ocean appeared on the earth, the simple life of blue-green algae was almost born.

Then, after 2 billion years of development, 530 million years ago, Cambrian life broke out, and advanced and complex life began to appear in large numbers, eventually forming the colorful life on the earth today.

According to the detection results of Enceladus, the ocean under the ice has formed at least 654.38+billion years, and according to the past cases of the earth, life appeared at the same time when the primitive ocean was formed, which shows that if Enceladus has life, its life should have been born more than 654.38+billion years.

In such a long evolutionary time, the life form of Enceladus is unlikely to stay in the category of microorganisms or simple life. In its ocean under the ice, more complex and larger-scale creatures should have appeared long ago.

According to analysis, the average depth of the ocean under Enceladus' ice is 10 km. Note that this is only a conservative estimate by scientists. Such a huge body of water, coupled with Enceladus' far lower gravity than the earth, is likely to breed a real "super-giant creature", whose shape is almost certainly completely different from that of the earth's creatures, and its weight is likely to far exceed the size of the earth's creatures.

This "super giant unknown creature" is a rigorous scientific title. If translated into popular language, it is four words: giant monster.

Personally, I think the second view of scientists is more reasonable, which has nothing to do with monsters or not, just because it shows more sufficient scientific basis.

Of course, whether there is life on Enceladus or not, and if so, what form, these two questions are only scientific inferences based on the current detection data. Although these inferences are probably correct at present, more evidence is needed to prove them.

According to the analysis of previous detection data, the ice layer covered by Enceladus on the ocean under ice is 30-40 kilometers thick, and a paper in the latest issue of Nature points out that the ice layer is even 48 kilometers thick.

It is not easy to drill such a thick ice layer. I'm afraid that only with the greater development of space technology, we can know whether the "super giant unknown creature" mentioned by astrobiologists exists or not by drilling a hole with construction machinery and putting down the deep-sea camera.

The data of Enceladus obtained by Cassini spacecraft at the cost of life shows that there is a high probability of life in its sub-ice ocean. If this discovery is confirmed, it shows that life on earth is probably not accidental, but a universal law in the universe, and this is the most important scientific significance it embodies.

If life on earth is not unique, is it as lively as the vegetable market at our doorstep in the endless starry sky that we can't see or understand?

Unfortunately, no one can give an answer, which is what the whole human world is pursuing-the ultimate brother JIU!

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Text/Dream of Golden Crown City