NASA is getting very excited about detecting hydrogen in the plumes of gas and vapour, which are shot out of the tiger stripes at the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Compounds of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen have already been detected, leaving NASA just two elements short of the Big Six basics for ‘life as we know it’. But its boffins are confident that phosphorus and sulphur are present in the hot, rocky core of a moon which features a 6-mile belt of liquid water under a frozen-solid outer shell.
Could there be primitive life on our doorstep a mere 800 million miles away? No one knows. And before the “we’re not aloners” get too excited, let us not forget that their wish for life all over the galaxy could involve the doomsday scenario of mile-long spaceships parked over our biggest cities and scum-sucking aliens adding another bunch of slaves to their empire.
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