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▲ 3 r/exoplanets+3 crossposts

I went down a rabbit hole on Enceladus tonight and I can't stop thinking about it - YouTube

So I’ve been reading through the Cassini mission data for the past few weeks, and there’s one detail that genuinely keeps me up at night.

Enceladus is smaller than the UK. It’s so far from the Sun that, by every model we had, it should be a completely frozen, dead rock. Nothing should be happening there.

But it has geysers. Active ones. Shooting water 400 km into space from cracks at its south pole. And in 2005, Cassini flew directly through one of those geysers.

It basically flew through an alien ocean.

What it found inside was extraordinary: molecular hydrogen — which on Earth comes from hydrothermal vents reacting with rock — silica nanoparticles, which only form when water above 90°C mixes with colder water, meaning there are hot vents on the ocean floor, and in 2018, scientists detected complex organic molecules: ring-shaped carbon compounds, precursors to amino acids.

Liquid water. A rocky seafloor. Hydrothermal vents. Organic molecules. Chemical energy.

Those aren’t just conditions similar to where life started on Earth. Those are the conditions where life started on Earth.

And Enceladus may have had them for billions of years.

The part that really gets me is what happens when Europa Clipper arrives at Jupiter in 2030 with an instrument suite remarkably similar to Cassini’s. If Europa’s plumes show the same chemical signatures…

That’s two separate oceans. Two separate data points. In the same solar system.

I don’t know what that means statistically, but it feels enormous.

Anyone else think about this a lot?

And genuinely curious — if microbial life gets confirmed on Enceladus, does that make the Fermi Paradox better or worse for you?

youtube.com
u/Delicious-Air-8494 — 15 hours ago
▲ 12 r/exoplanets+2 crossposts

Neptune's winds reach 2,100 km/h permanently — and we still don't know why

Something that genuinely disturbed me while researching

this: Neptune receives 900x less sunlight than Earth,

which should make its atmosphere completely still.

Instead it has the fastest sustained winds in the solar

system. Seven and a half times faster than a Category 5

hurricane. Permanently. No season, no storm cycle — just

always.

The leading theory is that Neptune radiates 2.6x more

heat from its interior than it receives from the Sun.

But the exact mechanism is still not fully understood.

I went deep on this for a video if anyone wants the

full breakdown — also covers Triton and the Voyager 2

magnetosphere recording that left scientists in an

emergency meeting.

Full video here: https://youtu.be/ube7fjzEwaE

u/Delicious-Air-8494 — 11 days ago
▲ 18 r/exoplanets

Exoplanets are typically given a theme when properly named, in reference to their host star. What are your ideas for possible naming themes the Alpha Centauri system (Proxima Centauri, Toliman, and Rigil Kentaurus) could have?

One idea I had was naming them after Centaurs from greek mythology, the only trouble is that there is already a group of celestial bodies called “Centaurs” and named after a list of of the most famous and notable centaurs (Chiron, Pholus, Nessus, etc). One obvious way to get around this though is by just naming them after alternate spellings of those characters, like Pluto’s moon Kerberos which used the more greek version of name referring to the 3 headed dog of the underworld as “Cereberus” is already an asteroid. Another suggestion someone gave me was naming the planets after Centaurs from notable 20th and 21st media as that’s when the planets were discovered.

“1. ⁠Proxima d - Ronan, calm and philosophical, likes to watch the stars, a stargazer.
2. ⁠Proxima b - Bane, hot-tempered and suspicious to strangers, also watches the stars.
3. ⁠Proxima c - Cloudbirth, careful and wise healer.
4. ⁠Aplha Centauri Ab - Glenstorm, respectable and serious prophet and warrior.”

“I think these names fit well, since Proxima d & c are tidally locked, they always look at their star. Alpha Cent Ab is a gas giant, so it has storms and it protects possible inner planets from asteroids. Proxima c is probably a distant super-earth or mini-neptune, therefore it should have many clouds.”

u/Fearless_Phantom — 13 days ago
▲ 27 r/exoplanets

Seasons on Upsilon Andromedae d's hypothetical moons?

Upsilon Andromedae d is massive enough to have earth sized moons and that could sustain atmospheres, but a big challenge for any hypothetical life there, Upsilon Andromedae d's orbit is highly eccentric, which would mean any moons it will have extreme seasons, What could they be?

u/aviviel — 14 days ago
▲ 14 r/exoplanets

JWST finds a heavy atmosphere on a mini-Neptune orbiting a hot Jupiter

A giant planet was supposed to have the place to itself. Instead, in a star system 190 light-years away, a hot Jupiter shares space with a much smaller world, a mini-Neptune tucked even closer to the star. That pairing is rare enough on its own. Now, a fresh look at the smaller planet’s atmosphere is giving astronomers a clue to how both worlds may have ended up there.

thebrighterside.news
u/Brighter-Side-News — 12 days ago