Phosphorus, though rare on Earth's surface, may be abundant on other worlds:
The last key ingredient for life has been discovered on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.
Phosphorus is a vital building block of life, used to construct DNA and RNA. Now, an analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveals that Enceladus' underground ocean contains the crucial nutrient. Not only that, its concentrations there may be thousands of times greater than in Earth's ocean, planetary scientist Yasuhito Sekine reported December 14 at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting.
The essential element may abound on many other icy worlds too, holding promise for the search for alien life, said Sekine, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
"We knew that Enceladus had most of the elements that are essential for life as we know it — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur," says Morgan Cable, an astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who was not involved in the research. "Now that [phosphorus] has been confirmed ... Enceladus now appears to meet all of the criteria for a habitable ocean."
Many researchers consider Enceladus to be among the most likely places to house extraterrestrial life. It's a world encased in ice, with an ocean of salty water hidden beneath (SN: 11/6/17). What's more, in 2005 the Cassini spacecraft observed geysers blasting vapor and ice grains out of Enceladus' icy shell (SN: 8/23/05). And in that space-faring spray, scientists have detected organic molecules.
But until now, researchers weren't sure if phosphorus also existed on Enceladus. On Earth's surface, the element is relatively scarce. Much of the phosphorus is locked away in minerals, and its availability often controls the pace at which life can proliferate.
So Sekine and colleagues analyzed chemical data, collected by the now-defunct Cassini, of particles in Saturn's E ring, a halo of material ejected from Enceladus' jets that wraps around Saturn.
Some ice grains in the E ring are enriched in a phosphorus compound called sodium phosphate, the researchers found. They estimate that a kilogram of water from Enceladus' ocean contains roughly 1 to 20 millimoles of phosphate, a concentration thousands of times greater than in Earth's big blue ocean.
[...] It's possible that the moon is simply barren of life, Sekine said. But there's another more hopeful explanation too. Life on frigid Enceladus, he said, may simply consume the nutrient at a sluggish pace.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 19, @05:51PM (5 children)
How many bananas per Olympic swimming pool?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday December 19, @06:47PM (4 children)
millimols per kg is a bizarre unit.
1 mol of water is 0.018 kg (thanks internet) so 1 kg ~ 50 mols, 10 millimols/kg = 1e-2 mols/50 mols = 200 ppm
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 19, @07:19PM (3 children)
For reference, what's the concentration in the Earth's biosphere?
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 19, @07:30PM (2 children)
NVM: a concentration thousands of times greater than in Earth's big blue ocean.
Then, at what point do you have literally toxic concentrations?
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Tuesday December 20, @06:25AM (1 child)
Toxic to who?
Life evolves in situ.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 20, @01:40PM
Good point, I suppose we would be interested in toxicity to phosphate based life, and there is certainly earth based algae that thrives in high concentrations of phosphate, even if it does kill off everything else during those blooms...
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 19, @07:27PM (13 children)
>Phosphorus is a vital building block of life, used to construct DNA and RNA.
DNA and RNA aren't the only way to make chemical machines that self-replicate and evolve into ever-more complex forms.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19, @08:27PM (12 children)
But if there's anything to panspermia theory, then there could be common building blocks for most "life" forms in the universe.
Enough about that. DRILL, BABY, DRILL.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday December 19, @10:47PM (11 children)
Ah yes, panspermia: the idea (not theory) that life is so special it must always have come from "somewhere else." God must have done it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @03:52AM (5 children)
It is difficult to escape the conundrum that the very first living thing appeared through the action of non-living things, at least in the sense that we understand "living".
Then even if that were the case, shouldn't credit be accorded to whatever agency caused all the non-living stuff to exist and interact in ways that might lead ultimately to a living thing? What part is design and what part implementation?
Or did all spring from nothing aimlessly?
--
I agree, though, that panspermia is nonsense masquerading as an important question. How would the universe differ if life were born elsewhere than here? And why does God need a starship?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday December 20, @08:46AM (1 child)
> Or did all spring from nothing aimlessly?
Indeed, this is the commonly accepted hypothesis.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Tuesday December 20, @04:31PM
Hence the absurdity of bearing fardels. (See: Hamlet)
--
"I just wanna say this is my way of telling you everything I could never say before" -Gerry Rafferty, Right Down the Line
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 20, @01:46PM (2 children)
Why is "credit" required?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @02:10PM
To settle intellectual property rights disputes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @04:49PM
Mere wanton grace.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @04:26AM (2 children)
Not really. There are planets billions of years older than Earth. If life is littering the universe, it would reduce the amount of time needed to develop on new planets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @05:55AM (1 child)
And that matters because...
???
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Okay, here's my guess.... because on earth we are well along the road toward making this planet lifeless again (MPLA), and absent panspermia the party may soon be over for all life in the universe. What do I win?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday December 20, @08:52AM
It is a statistical argument. If the probability of life moving from planet A to planet B via space rocks is > probability of life evolving on planet B independently, then panspermia is the way life happens.
One can estimate a few parameters regarding probability of life moving from planet A to planet B - e.g. how many interstellar asteroids are there, what is the velocity of said asteroids ("flux"), etc. It seems likely that asteroids are mostly bound to their local star system so not obvious what the mechanism for things to move from one star system to another.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by BlueCoffee on Tuesday December 20, @07:01AM (1 child)
Why not? Since we have no confirmed or proveable idea how life on Earth started, one idea (not theory..heh heh) is just as good as another. Magic man in the sky is just as plausable as the fantasy tale we are told that atoms of C-N-O-H and some P and S randomly combined together to create a living cell that was became self replicating,self-assembling, and joined up to creatae macro life and create organs like hearts, brains, kidneys, immune systems, endrocrinne sytems out of nothing.
I'm not in favor or disfavor of any idea of how life began on Earth, but since you want to be an expert please explain, in detail, the process of how C-N-O-H and some P and S can randomly combine together to create life. Scientists have been trying that since before test tubes were popular and...nothing. And how they can form a cell membrane or cell wall. Or all the organules that comprise a cell. Heck, even a precursor to a life, say a virus. Then explain how these cells and all lifeon earth became self-assembling by creating the most complex polymer known, DNA.
So called primoridal soup was nothing like soup or the goo movies portray...more like every day water with traces of dissolved minerals in it,something every human drinks every day. Think wet Mars...it's dead and always was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @02:28PM
And if the Mars samples turn up signs of microbial life?
That sounds like a pretty bold statement to make, particularly if you're going to reject out of hand the observational evidence as well as experimental evidence of amino acid formation in meteorites and in the lab. Magic Man in the Sky was a lot more plausible when the universe was very very small and we were at the center of it.