ALIEN ENCOUNTERS

METHANOGENESIS

n recent months, the scientific search for extraterrestrial life has been hotting up. Researchers examining data from the 2005 Cassini mission to Saturn have drastically increased the probability that there could be life on one of its moons, Enceladus. Enceladus has a completely frozen surface, but it is thought that a huge ocean of liquid water hides beneath this. At the moon’s south pole there are fractures in the ice, and Cassini found these had geysers blasting water ice and a wide range of chemicals from them which it was able to sample. The chemicals included dihydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), which are of