Happy Monday listeners.

For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Seltman.

Let's kick off the week with a quick roundup of some science news you may have missed.

First, some exciting space news.

According to a study published last Wednesday in nature astronomy, the ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus contains complex organic molecules that indicate

the environment could potentially support life. Enceladus is a moon about as wide across as the state of

Arizona. Back in 2005, the Cassini spacecraft caught plumes of water vapor and frozen particles

shooting up from tiger-stripe-like fissures in the planet's icy crust.

Subsequent analysis of gravity measurements captured by Cassini confirmed the presence of a subsurface

ocean near the Moon's south pole about a decade later. Cassini's mission ended in 2017, but new

analysis of data from a 2008 flyby just yielded

additional insights into the frosty moons watery reservoir.

In flying through one of Enceladus's water plumes, the spacecraft exposed its cosmic

dust analyzer instrument to tiny, freshly ejected grains of ice. After years of studying data from different flyby events

to understand how Cassini's instruments behaved under different conditions,

scientists were able to apply their findings to that old data and find new patterns.

The new study determined that several sophisticated carbon-based structures,

including esters and

ethers, can be found in the subsurface waters of Enceladus. That's important because these

structures are identical to substances considered to be vital chemical building blocks for living

organisms on Earth. And that adds to evidence the moon could be a compelling candidate for

hosting some kind of life,

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