Aliens near Uranus?
New NASA research has discovered that four moons that orbit the far outer planet — Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon — may have the composition to host life.
It was discovered that these four of 27 local moons contain “oceans that could be dozens of miles deep” perched “between their cores and icy crusts.”
“In addition, they found what could be a potential heat source in the moons’ rocky mantles, which release hot liquid, and would help an ocean maintain a warm environment – a scenario that is especially likely for Titania and Oberon, where the oceans may even be warm enough to potentially support habitability,” according to the space agency.
“There is evidence from telescopes that at least one of the moons, Ariel, has material that flowed onto its surface, perhaps from icy volcanoes, relatively recently.”
The prospective water source is a major breakthrough for the possibility of life comparatively close to Earth.
“Studying these bodies would help address the extent of habitable environments in the outer solar system. We model their thermal, physical and chemical evolution,” researchers from NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in southern California wrote in a recent study.
The team, led by study author Julie Castillo-Rogez, re-evaluated findings from NASA’s Voyager 2 satellite, which did a flyby of Uranus in the 1980s. It is one piece of a larger puzzle within regions of the Jovian planets that point to prospective life.
“When it comes to small bodies – dwarf planets and moons – planetary scientists previously have found evidence of oceans in several unlikely places, including the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, and Saturn’s moon Mimas,” she said.
“So there are mechanisms at play that we don’t fully understand. This paper investigates what those could be and how they are relevant to the many bodies in the solar system that could be rich in water but have limited internal heat.”
But to truly understand the concept further, researchers need to rethink how the moons came to be in the first place, Castillo-Rogez said.
“We need to develop new models for different assumptions on the origin of the moons in order to guide planning for future observations.”
