Alex McColgan

A mass spectrum analyser works by ionising and breaking a molecule apart at high energy.

how the molecule breaks apart matters.

A molecule's fingerprint can look different depending on how it was fragmented, in the same way that a watermelon prepared with a knife looks different from one prepared with a blender.

By understanding the typical pattern of how an object breaks under certain conditions, we can be more confident of what it used to be.

Improved analytical tools helped a team led by Nozea Kavajar from the Institute of Space Systems in Stuttgart do exactly that.

After more than a decade of studying the plume flybys, Kavajar's team published their results last year, using samples that were collected when Cassini passed just 20km from the Moon's surface.

In the most extreme examples, they found molecules more closely related to life than ever before – carbon dioxide, carbon-rich alkanes and alkenes.

cyclic esters and ethers, ethyls, and other nitrogen and oxygen-bearing compounds.

In other words, complex chemistry, potentially powered by hydrothermal vents.

These molecules are the Lego blocks of chemistry.

More functional groups allow for more complex reactions.

In a lab, these can become so complex that they even demonstrate Darwinian evolution.

And once you have evolution,

There's just one last requirement.

Time.

What we need to know is, how stable and frequent is this geothermal activity?

Would life have had enough time to emerge on Enceladus?

Although Cassini was at Saturn for 13 years, that was, of course, too short a time to be conclusive.

Enter the James Webb Space Telescope.

A team led by Dr. Jeronimo Villanueva used 10 hours of the James Webb's time to check in on Enceladus, and what they saw was shocking.