Teddy Hall’s Professor Carly Howett’s Research Suggests Saturn’s Icy Moon May Host Life

Professor Carly Howett, Tutorial Fellow in Physics at St Edmund Hall, is involved in the latest study from NASA’s Cassini mission which shows that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, is losing heat from both poles – indicating that it has the long-term stability required for life to develop. The research ‘Endogenic heat at Enceladus’ north pole’ has been published in Science Advances.

Professor Howett along with a team of researchers from Oxford University and Southwest Research Institute and the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona have provided the first evidence of significant heat flow at Enceladus’ north pole, overturning previous assumptions that heat loss was confined to its active south pole. This finding confirms that the icy moon is emitting far more heat than would be expected if it were simply a passive body, strengthening the case that it could support life.

Enceladus is a highly active world, with a global, salty sub-surface ocean, believed to be the source of its heat. The presence of liquid water, heat and the right chemicals (such as phosphorus and complex hydrocarbons) means that its sub-surface ocean is believed to be one of the best places in our solar system for life to have evolved outside the Earth.

Professor Howett shares: “Understanding how much heat Enceladus is losing on a global level is crucial to knowing whether it can support life. It is really exciting that this new result supports Enceladus’ long-term sustainability, a crucial component for life to develop.”

For more information about this study, please visit Oxford University’s press release of which some wording has been republished here.