A cold, chemosynthetic biosphere under a dead sediment layer

1:02:34out and sulfur and all the >> This is cold. >> That's actually really important. So like it all of the ice moons >> Mhm. >> become much more interesting. Yes. Because of the existence of proving that cold serpent, cool serpentization can have a biosphere. >> Exactly. Exactly. And Enceladus is a big one. Cassini actually sampled plumes. This is a moon of Saturn. >> And Encelatus is something where we know there's an ocean oceanic >> um ocean. There's an ocean there. There's a crust on top. And there's so much geological activity that there's actually geysers that shoot out plumes of stuff into the into the into the

1:03:15cosmos. And Cassini, we were lucky enough the Cassini got close enough that it actually sampled those plumes. >> Mhm. Mhm. As it was flying by. >> As it was flying by. And what we measured was hydrogen gas and methane. >> Uh which is which is exactly what we have here. meaning and so like just I know I'm extrapolating this is an extrapolation however given what we just walked through about what we've seen at these two plates >> in the Marian's trench on Earth where we were able to send down our little torpedo pull up meters worth the

1:03:56top layer was dead but below that the same chemistry yeah >> that exists in that region here on Earth mimics the chemistry that Cassini pulled up. >> Yeah. >> And there's a direct match. >> There's a direct match. >> That's not to say that there is life on Enceladus. >> Yeah. >> However, the chemistry >> the chemistry is very same. Same. >> It's very similar. >> Yeah. >> A pizza in New York is not the same thing as a pizza in California. >> Yeah. >> I get it. >> Yeah. >> But it's still a pizza. But there there's possibility there which is so

1:04:36exciting. >> Which is so exciting. The other thing with Europa, right, models predict that serpentinization is actually more probable than let's say deep sea vents on Europa, which makes sense. And now we've got Europa Clipper going there, it's going to do a bunch of things. >> If we're going to send, you know, if we get our funding back >> and JPL gets its funding back, we >> need our funding back. >> Yeah. But if we do, then we're going to send, you know, let's say something that drills into the Europa Y ocean and then tries to look for it. Well, those things should probably have a mass spectrometer, >> right? Because the mass spectrometer is what was used to actually characterize these lipids and these lipid biomarkers. So maybe let's not look for DNA. Maybe

1:05:18let's look for lipids. Right? This introduces a whole new paradigm for what to even look for when we go to these distant worlds looking for extraterrestrial life. That's a brilliant insight in that what we look for determines the results and it's the so it's the push back that people have given about steady looking for radio signals and it's like any sufficient technological da da like would they be still using it yada yada I mean in a in an analog in an in an analogy what we're saying is historically maybe we'd always be looking for DNA as the sign of life uh looking for lipids the presence of lipids is another signature >> yes >> that is equally relevant and viable

1:06:00search and might be more fruitful >> because even on earth we can see in regions that we previously believe to be uninhabitable life is there but the way we found it was not through the DNA was through the discovery of the lipid presence. >> Yeah. Exactly. And like who knows maybe they have a different form of genetic material right DNA is like this arbitrary thing that perhaps our ancestor 4 billion years ago came up with right to to encode data >> but there there's there's got to be other ways right it's just whoever came up with it first was like this is dope >> and then just like ran with it