A new study suggests we might discover alien life by 2030. Scientists found that the tools on a spacecraft going to one of the best places to search for life could detect even a single living cell in a tiny piece of ice.
When thinking about where we might find life outside Earth, we often consider Mars or distant planets sending signals. However, the most promising spots could be the icy moons around big gas planets in our solar system. Moons like Enceladus around Saturn and Europa around Jupiter likely have vast oceans under their icy surfaces. These oceans might have the right conditions and chemicals to support life.
NASA is sending a mission to one of these moons later this year to learn more about its conditions. The Europa Clipper spacecraft will circle around Europa. It will go as close as 25 km (16 miles) above the surface to study its makeup and geology. It will also measure the internal ocean and collect and study ice and dust grains that may shoot out in plumes. Even though the mission wasn’t specifically meant to look for life, a new study suggests it might still find aliens.
A team of scientists from the University of Washington and the Freie Universität Berlin conducted an experiment to see if Europa Clipper’s tools could find microbes trapped in ice grains. To imitate what the spacecraft will do when examining data from Europa’s plumes, they shot a thin stream of water into a vacuum. Then, they used a laser to analyze the droplets and studied them with mass spectrometry to see what they contained.
The researchers used a type of bacteria called Sphingopyxis alaskensis to represent the aliens. This bacteria is often found in cold, nutrient-poor places like the waters near Alaska. These microbes have a protective layer around them made of lipids. Sometimes, they form a thin layer on the surface of the ocean, which can get carried into the air in sea spray. If similar life exists in Europa’s ocean, it might travel into space on ice grains. Then, Clipper’s mass spectrometer could find them by detecting their negatively charged fatty acids and lipids.
“We’ve outlined a possible way bacteria could be trapped in icy material on moons like Enceladus or Europa and then released into space,” said Fabian Klenner, who led the study. “Finding lipids or fatty acids is more interesting to me than finding DNA building blocks because fatty acids seem to last longer.”
Indeed, the team discovered that the instrument could spot a tiny biological sample, even one cell in one ice grain.
“For the first time, we’ve proven that a mass spectrometer on a spacecraft can detect even a small amount of cellular material,” said Klenner. “Our findings make us more confident that with upcoming instruments, we can find life forms similar to those on Earth, which we believe could exist on moons with oceans.”
While we’re starting to get used to hearing about planets and moons that might support life, it’s still thrilling to think we could actually find alien life if it’s out there. We’ll be eagerly waiting for Clipper’s arrival at Europa in 2030.
