Paper
28 September 2015 Ocean in Enceladus enhances the case for Panspermia
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Abstract
The recently announced confirmation of a global ocean beneath the icy outer shell of the Saturnian moon Enceladus provides strong support for cometary panspermia. Recent discoveries have shown that cyanobacteria, diatoms and other photosynthetic microphytoplankton live in the deep, dark bathysphere of the terrestrial oceans. Evidence for liquid water regimes that might harbour life and organics on other icy moons, comets and Pluto adds credence to the concept of a single connected microbial biosphere in the solar system. These discoveries provide additional support for the possibility that life may be widely distributed throughout the distant regions of the Solar System and the validity of the hypothesis of Panspermia.
© (2015) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Chandra Wickramasinghe, Milton Wainwright, Gensuke Tokoro, and Richard B. Hoover "Ocean in Enceladus enhances the case for Panspermia", Proc. SPIE 9606, Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology XVII, 96061R (28 September 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2222098
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Cited by 1 scholarly publication.
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KEYWORDS
Water

Liquids

Comets

Microorganisms

Organisms

Solar system

Pluto

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