3 moons and a planet that could have alien life

Is there life beyond Earth in our solar system?

Wow, what a powerful question. You know, as a scientist -- planetary scientist -- we
really didn't take that very seriously until recently.
Carl Sagan always said, "It takes extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims." And
the claims of having life beyond Earth need to be definitive, they need to be loud and
they need to be everywhere for us to be able to believe it.
So how do we make this journey? What we decided to do is first look for those
ingredients for life. The ingredients of life are: liquid water -- we have to have a
solvent, can't be ice, has to be liquid. We also have to have energy. We also have to
have organic material -- things that make us up, but also things that we need to
consume.
So we have to have these elements in environments for long periods of time for us to
be able to be confident that life, in that moment when it starts, can spark and then grow
and evolve.
Well, I have to tell you that early in my career, when we looked at those three
elements, I didn't believe that they were beyond Earth in any length of time and for any
real quantity.
Why? We look at the inner planets. Venus is way too hot -- it's got no water. Mars -- dry
and arid. It's got no water. And beyond Mars, the water in the solar system is all frozen.
But recent observations have changed all that. It's now turning our attention to the right
places for us to take a deeper look and really start to answer our life question.
So when we look out into the solar system, where are the possibilities? We're
concentrating our attention on four locations. The planet Mars and then three moons of
the outer planets: Titan, Europa and small Enceladus.
So what about Mars? Let's go through the evidence. Well, Mars we thought was initially
moon-like: full of craters, arid and a dead world.
And so about 15 years ago, we started a series of missions to go to Mars and see if
water existed on Mars in its past that changed its geology. We ought to be able to
notice that. And indeed we started to be surprised right away. Our higher resolution
images show deltas and river valleys and gulleys that were there in the past. And in
fact, Curiosity -- which has been roving on the surface now for about three years -- has
really shown us that it's sitting in an ancient river bed, where water flowed rapidly. And
not for a little while, perhaps hundreds of millions of years. And if everything was
there, including organics,perhaps life had started.
Curiosity has also drilled in that red soil and brought up other material. And we were
really excited when we saw that. Because it wasn't red Mars, it was gray material, it's
gray Mars. We brought it into the rover,we tasted it, and guess what? We tasted
organics -- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur -- they were all
there.
So Mars in its past, with a lot of water, perhaps plenty of time, could have had
life, could have had that spark, could have grown. And is that life still there? We don't
know that.
But a few years ago we started to look at a number of craters. During the summer, dark
lines would appear down the sides of these craters. The more we looked, the more
craters we saw, the more of these features. We now know more than a dozen of them.
A few months ago the fairy tale came true. We announced to the world that we know
what these streaks are. It's liquid water. These craters are weeping during the
summer. Liquid water is flowing down these craters. So what are we going to do now -now that we see the water? Well, it tells us that Mars has all the ingredients necessary
for life. In its past it had perhaps two-thirds of its northern hemisphere -- there was an
ocean. It has weeping water right now. Liquid water on its surface. It has organics. It
has all the right conditions.
So what are we going to do next? We're going to launch a series of missions to begin
that search for life on Mars. And now it's more appealing than ever before.

As we move out into the solar system, here's the tiny moon Enceladus. This is not in
what we call the traditional habitable zone, this area around the sun. This is much
further out. This object should be ice over a silicate core.
But what did we find? Cassini was there since 2006, and after a couple years looked
back after it flew by Enceladus and surprised us all. Enceladus is blasting sheets of
water out into the solar system and sloshing back down onto the moon. What a
fabulous environment. Cassini just a few months ago also flew through the plume, and
it measured silicate particles. Where does the silica come from? It must come from the
ocean floor. The tidal energy is generated by Saturn, pulling and squeezing this moon - is melting that ice, creating an ocean. But it's also doing that to the core.
Now, the only thing that we can think of that does that here on Earth as an analogy
... are hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents deep in our ocean were discovered in
1977. Oceanographers were completely surprised. And now there are thousands of
these below the ocean.
What do we find? The oceanographers, when they go and look at these hydrothermal
vents, they're teeming with life, regardless of whether the water is acidic or alkaline -doesn't matter. So hydrothermal vents are a fabulous abode for life here on Earth.
So what about Enceladus? Well, we believe because it has water and has had it for a
significant period of time, and we believe it has hydrothermal vents with perhaps the
right organic material, it is a place where life could exist. And not just microbial -maybe more complex because it's had time to evolve.
Another moon, very similar, is Europa. Galileo visited Jupiter's system in 1996 and
made fabulous observations of Europa. Europa, we also know, has an under-the-ice
crust ocean. Galileo mission told us that, but we never saw any plumes. But we didn't
look for them.
Hubble, just a couple years ago, observing Europa, saw plumes of water spraying from
the cracks in the southern hemisphere, just exactly like Enceladus.
These moons, which are not in what we call a traditional habitable zone, that are out in
the solar system,have liquid water. And if there are organics there, there may be life.
This is a fabulous set of discoveries because these moons have been in this
environment like that for billions of years. Life started here on Earth, we believe, after
about the first 500 million, and look where we are. These moons are fabulous moons.
Another moon that we're looking at is Titan. Titan is a huge moon of Saturn. It perhaps
is much larger than the planet Mercury. It has an extensive atmosphere. It's so
extensive -- and it's mostly nitrogen with a little methane and ethane -- that you have to
peer through it with radar.
And on the surface, Cassini has found liquid. We see lakes ... actually almost the size
of our Black Sea in some places. And this area is not liquid water; it's methane. If
there's any place in the solar system where life is not like us, where the substitute of
water is another solvent -- and it could be methane -- it could be Titan.
Well, is there life beyond Earth in the solar system? We don't know yet, but we're hot
on the pursuit. The data that we're receiving is really exciting and telling us -- forcing us
to think about this in new and exciting ways. I believe we're on the right track. That in
the next 10 years, we will answer that question.And if we answer it, and it's
positive, then life is everywhere in the solar system. Just think about that. We may not
be alone.