About This Episode

Is Saturn’s moon Enceladus the most likely place in our solar system to harbor life, or are Titan’s methane seas or the subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa better candidates? Dive in with StarTalk All-Stars host and planetary scientist Carolyn Porco and her guest astrobiologist Chris McKay from the NASA Ames Research Center. Together, Carolyn and Chris have been lobbying for 11 years to get people excited about Enceladus. You’ll discover what the Cassini mission has learned about the moon, from the salty global ocean trapped under 35km of ice, to the unexpectedly enormous geysers spewing organic matter into space, most of which floats back to the frozen surface as snow. The pair also answer Cosmic Queries chosen by co-host Chuck Nice about the search for extraterrestrial life, intelligent or microbial, both in our solar system and on the billions of earthlike exoplanets right here in our own galaxy. Find out what the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet could tell us about life on that planet, and how the chirality, or molecular “handedness” of complex amino acids, can be an indicator of biological selectivity. You’ll also hear what an amazing job the Cassini spacecraft has done, what the next mission to Enceladus would look for – and why there might not even be a next mission to the Saturn system.

NOTE: All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: Enceladus Up Close, with Carolyn Porco – StarTalk All-Stars.