Life on Enceladus?

Enceladus geyers, courtesy NASA

I wrote previously about the possibility that life might be discovered in the oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus, and I proposed that genetic testing would show it to be related to life on Earth. So how did it get there all the way from Earth?

Note what the article says: "The salt is the same familiar sodium chloride found in our oceans..." What if, at some point in the Earth's history (say, about 4,000 years ago), a great deal of water from underneath the crust spewed out, some of it raining down salty water over the Earth and into our oceans, and some it reaching escape velocity? Do we have any record of this?

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month--on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. (Genesis 7:11)

Living organisms may not turn up on other planets, but if they do, this would  explain how they got there. On reaching space, the water would flash-freeze, preserving any bacteria and small forms of life contained in it. The sun would drive a form of evaporative jetting much as comets do, sending the ice crystals spiraling out to the outer solar system where they would be captured by the gravity of the outer giants and rain down on their moons. On Enceladus, with the ice melting beneath the surface, some of the bacteria might revive and grow. The likelihood of this happening is slim, but more likely than life coming from non-life. As Pasteur demonstrated, all life is from life. You can read more about this Enceladus scenario in my novel, Beyond Earth.

Saturn's Saltwater Moon

Simulation of plumes on Enceladus

Two teams of researchers reviewing data from the Cassini spacecraft came to the same conclusion that Saturn's moon Enceladus not only has a global ocean of liquid water beneath its ice, it's salt water. CNET explains how the researchers analyzed imagery of icy plumes on the surface:

Looking at this data, the team was able to determine the content of the plumes -- and by extension the subsurface ocean -- to be highly salty with an alkaline pH of around 11 or 12. The salt is the same familiar sodium chloride found in our oceans and on our french fries here on Earth, but there's also a healthy dose of sodium carbonate, also known as "soda ash," which we use here in detergents as a water softener and sometimes in cooking.

The researchers get very excited about the possibility that this salty soda water might harbor some form of life. Why does this idea so excite them? Because in their minds, this would be a vindication of their belief in Evolution. If life was found on Enceladus, wouldn't it prove Evolution?

In a word, no. In my novel, Beyond Earth, I've written a chapter about just such a scenario where life is discovered in the ocean of Enceladus. But it proves to be so problematic for the Evolutionist that he... well that would be giving away the story.

How could discovering life in space be a problem to an Evolutionist? When that life proves to be genetically identical to life on Earth. In any court of law, genetic testing proves paternity beyond a shadow of a doubt. In this case, if life is discovered there, and it proves to be genetically related to life on Earth, then the simple conclusion is that it came from Earth. Then the question is, how did it get there from here? I'll get to that in my next post.