The Encaledus Ocean(s)

Long have humans searched for signs of extraterrestrial life in the cosmos. In the fifty years that we have spent scouring our solar system, only few evidences have been found which support the theory of little green men outside of our world. The most concrete finding which backs this is the discovery of a liquid water ocean on Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn, about 500 kilometers in diameter. This is because of many reasons, which I will explain in the following passages.

Enceladus is Saturn's 6th largest moon, and is about a tenth of the size of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Enceladus was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel, who also discovered Uranus. Little was known about the icy moon until the Cassini spacecraft took close range photographs of the surface in 2005. Amazingly, the photographs revealed geysers and cryovolcanoes spewing water and ice hundreds of kilometers into the air, some even escaping out into space, contributing to the rings of Saturn. The jets of water also contained silica particles, which are created in hot temperatures. Firstly, scientists were baffled with these findings, however, they soon realized that there must be a liquid water ocean under the thick layer of ice which coats the moon. Tectonic activity and friction caused by gravitational pull heat up the core of the moon. Small vents much like the ones found on ocean floors on Earth are likely to exist on Enceladus. They hint at the fact that there is a source of heat within the celestial body, and that many of the same processes which occur on Earth are not isolated cases. This is particularly exciting to scientists and ET - hopefuls, as geological activity is the catalyst of life on Earth, and seeing it happen elsewhere in the solar system shows that the green men of our imaginations could well be reality. If creatures were to exist in the warm oceans of Enceladus, they would probably look like tube - worms, and simulate a hydrothermal vent ecosystem, as are seen on the bottoms of oceans on Earth.

All in all, the finding of the planet wide ocean on Enceladus, an icy moon, shows how life could possibly be sustained anywhere, no matter the limitations of the area. A true underdog story, that such a barren wasteland as pictured below is the greatest lead that we have to finding extraterrestrial life.

The icy world of Enceladus

Citations

"Enceladus - In Depth." NASA Solar System Exploration. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2016.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-enceladus-global-ocean-water-cassini-nasa-20150916-story.html