Saturn\u0027s moon Enceladus has enticed scientists for years with its plumes fizzing their way up from an ocean beneath a thick crust of ice.
“But that doesn’t mean that it’s actually hosting life, that it’s inhabited,” he added.
Phosphorus is the “P” in CHNOPS, which stands for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur — the sextet of elements that, along with water and energy, are foundational to biochemistry on Earth. Because it is relatively rare, phosphorus has been considered a “bottleneck” for life, Postberg said.
Despite their great distance from the sun, the ice moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn can host liquid oceans because they get energy from gravity. The small bodies are squeezed and stretched by tidal forces generated in their circuits around the huge planets, action that produces internal heat. Jupiter’s rocky moon Io, covered with volcanoes, is the star exhibit of that phenomenon.
Earth life is constructed with common ingredients. It is not made of uranium, for example. But of the six essential elements, phosphorus plays an outsize role in terrestrial biochemistry. It’s necessary, for example, to the structure of DNA and RNA and for energy transfer in cells.
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