Tiny Enceladus [a moon of Saturn] May Hold Ingredients of Life

UANews.org (University of Arizona ) ^ | 05 September 2005 | Lori Stiles

[drlevy88]

Darwin is science's Buddha.

[djf]

Let me make something clear. Darwin never proposed evolution. He simply said that better adapted forms tended to survive.

I get sick and tired of people railing on Darwin when what he did was actually a brilliant piece of detective work. DNA, which is the mechanism of evolution, wasn't even discovered until 80 years after Darwin died.

[Dimensio]

Darwin is science's Buddha.

I don't quite see the connection between a man who proposed that life originated through common ancestry with decent into diversity facilitated through reproductive selection on variable inherited traits and a man who proposed that the key to escaping the cycle life, death and rebirth was to eliminate all desire.

[DaGman]

No, not Europa. "All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there."

I know, someone else already posted it!

[ordinaryguy]

They do have sterilization procedures. Those procedures have been found to be lacking. When we send craft, we are also sending microbes. And that was true even when we really tried complete sterilization, which we don't bother with anymore.

[NicknamedBob]

"Ceres has, supposedly, as much water as Earth does ..."

If I recall correctly, the given statistic was a calculation of five times as much fresh water as Earth has. My intuition is that the water vapor would be preferentially driven from Venus, rather than sulphur compounds.

If life should exist in the clouds of Venus, we should study it, perhaps even going to the effort of emplacing floating science colonies.

However, if Venus is truly devoid of life, as I suspect it is, I would suggest using it as a source for Carbon Dioxide for other interplanetary colonies. Scoop up a bit of Venusian atmosphere with a fast-moving probe, and rocket it off to Mars to build a thicker atmosphere there.

[ZULU]

"Enceladus"

I thought I ordered that in a restaurant once.