Creationism in Crisis - Key Ingredient for Abiogenesis Found on Jupiter's Moon, Enceladus

Creationism in Crisis

Key Ingredient for Abiogenesis Found on Jupiter's Moon, Enceladus

Enceladus has the whitest and most reflective surface that astronomers have yet observed, and it’s known for spraying out tiny icy silica particles.

Source: UCLA

Key building block for life found at Saturn’s Moon Enceladus | Southwest Research Institute

Artist's impression of the south polar region of Enceladus shows massive jets of water ice being blasted into space.

Image credit: Karl Kofoed / NASA.

Creationist frauds playing the 'Big Scary Numbers' tactic and the false dichotomy fallacy, which argues that the probability of self-replicating molecules arising on Earth is so small as to be indistinguishable from zero, and therefore it must have been done by the locally-popular god their mummy and daddy believed in, usually include the notional idea of the 'Goldilocks zone' which is assumed to be a zone round the sun where the conditions are 'just right' for life to exist.

They then argue that the Universe must be fine-tuned for human life on Earth, therefore God did it!

This is, of course, a statistical sleight of hand because the probability of something happening that has already happened is 1 (certainty), not some infinitesimally small fraction of 1. It has happened, therefore it happened. For some reason, the logic in that escapes the hard of thinking on whom the creationist frauds prey.

So, anything which shows that self-replicating molecules, i.e., life arising elsewhere in the Universe, and especially in the solar system far away from the 'Goldilocks zone', is anathema for creationists who must find a way to deal with another inconvenient fact.

Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened recently when an international team of scientists led by Frank Postberg, of the Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, and including Christopher R. Glein of the Space Science Division, Space Sector, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA have shown that the ocean beneath the ice covering on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, has a key building block for 'life', phosphate. Phosphates are essential for life as we know it, not only as the main mineral in the bones of vertebrates but also as a component of metabolic pathways in the form of adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and the nucleotides in DNA and RNA.
The discovery was made in data from NASA’s Cassini mission.

A Southwest Research Institute press release explain how this was done:

Scientists have inferred that a soda or alkaline ocean (containing NaHCO3 and/or Na2CO3) inside of Enceladus interacts geochemically with a rocky core. Geochemical modeling and laboratory experiments indicate that this interaction promotes the dissolution of phosphate minerals, making phosphate (e.g., HPO4-2) readily available to potential life in the ocean. The discovery of phosphates by Cassini strongly supports the paradigm that Enceladus’ ocean is habitable.

Credit: Courtesy of SwRI

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SwRI Lead Scientist Dr. Christopher Glein was part of a team that found phosphorus, a key building block for life, from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s small moon, Enceladus. Liquid water erupts from the moon’s subsurface ocean, forming a plume that contains grains of frozen ocean water. Some of these ice grains go on to form Saturn’s E ring. The team analyzed Cassini spacecraft data from ice grains in the E ring, which revealed fingerprints of soluble phosphate salts from Enceladus’ ocean.

Credit: Courtesy of SwRI and Freie Universität Berlin

June 14, 2023 — The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life. The team directly detected phosphorus in the form of phosphates originating from the moon’s ice-covered global ocean using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Cassini explored Saturn and its system of rings and moons for over 13 years.

In 2020 (published in 2022), we used geochemical modeling to predict that phosphorus should be abundant in Enceladus’ ocean. Now, we have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean.

We found phosphate concentrations at least 100 times higher in the moon’s plume-forming ocean waters than in Earth’s oceans. Using a model to predict the presence of phosphate is one thing, but actually finding the evidence for phosphate is incredibly exciting. This is a stunning result for astrobiology and a major step forward in the search for life beyond Earth.

Geochemical experiments and modeling demonstrate that such high phosphate concentrations result from enhanced phosphate mineral solubility, in Enceladus and possibly other icy ocean worlds in the solar system beyond Jupiter. With this finding, the ocean of Enceladus is now known to satisfy what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement for life. The next step is clear – we need to go back to Enceladus to see if the habitable ocean is actually inhabited.

Dr. Christopher Glein, coauthor
A leading expert in extraterrestrial oceanography
Space Science Division,
Space Sector,
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA.

The Cassini spacecraft discovered Enceladus’ subsurface liquid water and analyzed samples in a plume of ice grains and gases erupting into space from cracks in the moon’s icy surface. Analysis of a class of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer showed the presence of sodium phosphates. The team’s observational results, together with laboratory analogue experiments, suggest that phosphorus is readily available in Enceladus’ ocean as phosphates.

Phosphorus in the form of phosphates is vital for all life on Earth. It is essential for the creation of DNA and RNA, energy-carrying molecules, cell membranes, bones and teeth in people and animals, and even the sea’s microbiome of plankton. Life as we know it is simply not possible without phosphates.

One of the most profound discoveries in planetary science over the past 25 years is that worlds with oceans beneath a surface layer of ice are common in our solar system. Such worlds include the icy satellites of the giant planets, such as Europa, Titan and Enceladus, as well as more distant bodies like Pluto. Worlds like Earth with surface oceans must reside within a narrow range of distances from their host stars to maintain the temperatures that support surface liquid water. Interior ocean worlds, however, can occur over a much wider range of distances, greatly expanding the number of habitable worlds likely to exist across the galaxy.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

Technical details can be read in the team's published paper in Nature:

Abstract

Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbours a global¹ ice-covered water ocean^2,3. The Cassini spacecraft investigated the composition of the ocean by analysis of material ejected into space by the moon’s cryovolcanic plume^4,5,6,7,8,9. The analysis of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer¹⁰ enabled inference of major solutes in the ocean water (Na⁺, K⁺, Cl^–, HCO3^–, CO3^2–) and its alkaline pH^3,11. Phosphorus, the least abundant of the bio-essential elements^12,13,14, has not yet been detected in an ocean beyond Earth. Earlier geochemical modelling studies suggest that phosphate might be scarce in the ocean of Enceladus and other icy ocean worlds^15,16. However, more recent modelling of mineral solubilities in Enceladus’s ocean indicates that phosphate could be relatively abundant¹⁷. Here we present Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer mass spectra of ice grains emitted by Enceladus that show the presence of sodium phosphates. Our observational results, together with laboratory analogue experiments, suggest that phosphorus is readily available in Enceladus’s ocean in the form of orthophosphates, with phosphorus concentrations at least 100-fold higher in the moon’s plume-forming ocean waters than in Earth’s oceans. Furthermore, geochemical experiments and modelling demonstrate that such high phosphate abundances could be achieved in Enceladus and possibly in other icy ocean worlds beyond the primordial CO₂ snowline, either at the cold seafloor or in hydrothermal environments with moderate temperatures. In both cases the main driver is probably the higher solubility of calcium phosphate minerals compared with calcium carbonate in moderately alkaline solutions rich in carbonate or bicarbonate ions.

Postberg, F., Sekine, Y., Klenner, F. et al.
Detection of phosphates originating from Enceladus’s ocean.
Nature 618, 489–493 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05987-9

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This is on a moon orbiting another planet in this planetary system, which extends the notion of the 'Goldilocks Zone' far from the orbit of Earth and shows that the probability of such zones throughout the Universe is much higher than creationist frauds would have their dupes believe.

And it brings the prospect of 'life' on other planets and moons that much closer - something for which no doubt creationists frauds are already rehearsing the mental gymnastics needed to explain it in the context of humans being a unique and special creation by magic on a planet specially created by magic on which to place them, by a supernatural magician who created the vast Universe just for humans to live on a tiny speck of it.

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