Thursday, March 09, 2006

NASA - NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

NASA ::: Cassini ::: Saturn ::: Enceladus ::: Water!!!

"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said Dr. John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. (from above link to NASA)
Maybe, if funding for such projects are kept up, we'll have scratched the surface a little more by the end of the next century?

In the midst of this, two other ideas/questions pop-up - one of a diametrically opposite view, and another a sort of a paradox.

The diametrically opposite view - have we exhausted all possible venues of development and improvement of life on this planet that we currently call home that we are looking to explore the possibility of life on other bodies in the Solar System?

The paradox - plagiarized from the promo for the excellent BBC/Discovery co-production "Blue Planet" - we know more about outer space and the moon than we do about our own oceans and water-bodies.