Could Saturn's Moons Host Life?

At St Edmund Hall, Tutorial Fellow in Physics Professor Carly Howett, is helping us get closer to answering one of humanity’s oldest questions: are we alone? Her research explores the icy worlds of the outer solar system from the moons of Saturn and Jupiter to Kuiper Belt objects and asteroids, searching for environments that could potentially support life. We recently interviewed Professor Howett for a social media video series about her latest research.

What is your Saturn icy moon research about?

So my research is primarily exploring the outer solar system, so everything from Jupiter and out, preferably without an atmosphere, so icy worlds, Kuiper belt objects and asteroids, trying to understand what they’re made of and whether any of them could host life.

What are you trying to find out?

I’m trying to find out really what the surfaces are made from and how warm they could be, whether there’s any heating that’s coming up from below and whether that’s being radiated to space or whether there’s any form of activities like cryovolcanoes, volcanoes made of ice and erupting.

And those are things we look for in the thermal, the heat signatures of those moons.

And we do that by sending spacecraft and instruments to them and having a good look.

What is the impact of your research upon wider society?

My research contributes towards just general exploration.

One of the questions that humanity’s always had is, are we alone?

And I think that this work, exploring worlds that are fundamentally the most habitable places in our solar system outside of the Earth, brings us one step closer to answering that fundamental question.