Space & Astronomy

Earth microbes can survive in Enceladus' ocean, new study finds

By T.K. Randall
September 28, 2026

Image: Enceladus
Credit: (PD) NASA/JPL The sixth largest moon of Saturn, Enceladus is an icy world with similarities to Jupiter's moon Europa.

Like its Jovian counterpart, this frigid world is believed to be home to an ocean of liquid water where primitive extraterrestrial life may thrive unseen even today in its freezing depths.

To learn more about this, geomicrobiologist William Orsi and colleagues at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich decided to recreate the ocean on Enceladus in a laboratory setting.

By carefully combining water with salts, carbonates and powdered rock, they were able to create a realistic approximation of the conditions found on Saturn's moon.They then decided to see if any known Earth life forms could survive in it.

Intriguingly, they found that microbes found near deep-sea vents off the coast of Japan not only survived, but even adapted their metabolism to cope with the carbon dioxide in the water.

In other words - the research showed that life forms can actually survive in the conditions found in the ocean on Enceladus, thus making it possible for alien life to exist there.

Whether there really are alien organisms on Enceladus, however, continues to remain a mystery.

Source: The Guardian

Tags: Life, Enceladus