Cyanide found in the vicinity of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is a potential building block for life

The water in the ocean of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, contains hydrogen cyanide, ethane and methanol. These are all building blocks of life.

Plumes of water vapor flow from cracks on Enceladus’ surface. It appears to contain hydrogen cyanide. This may be a sign that the ocean beneath the surface of Saturn’s icy moon harbors life, although cyanide is toxic to most life on Earth.

The Cassini space probe flew past Enceladus’ plumes several times at the beginning of this century. He also took samples. Preliminary analysis of these samples has revealed elements and compounds that may be important for life.

However, it was difficult to identify specific compounds. This is because particles often explode when they enter the sample chamber at high speed.

Alcohol

Biophysicist Jonah Peter from Harvard University and colleagues conducted a new analysis of Cassini data. They used a new statistical method. This made it possible to characterize more compounds, they wrote in the scientific journal Nature astronomy.

They found evidence of several previously undiscovered compounds, including hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, ethane and traces of methanol, a type of alcohol. All of these compounds can come from chemical reactions that are important for life. Hydrogen cyanide in particular is promising.

“We don’t yet have a complete picture of the molecules that can be found there that are essential for the origin of life. We don’t even know how life arose on Earth,” Peter warns. “But we do have a good idea of ​​some of the building blocks necessary for life to arise, and hydrogen cyanide is one of those.” The building blocks are very diverse.”

For example, we know that it can be a building block for amino acids, RNA and other biological macromolecules. So its presence in the moon’s water columns is a good sign that life is possible in Enceladus’ subterranean sea.