Recently NASA has become very excited over the discovery of quite a few water covered worlds. Some are planets and others are moons. When you look at our solar system and study some of the planetary systems in it, it seems like we have solar systems within our solar system. Take Jupiter for example. Jupiter is the largest planet we have discovered so far in our solar system. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and is known as a gas giant. We have three of these gas giants in our solar system. The other two are Uranus and Neptune. The reason I said there were planetary systems which rival the solar system circling some of our planets in our solar system is some planets have quite a few moons circling them. Since we are talking about Jupiter, NASA lists fifty-three moons for Jupiter along with fourteen provisional moons. You can see it would be quite a chore to explore all these moons. The smallest of the Jupiter moons has only a diameter of 1.2 miles and the largest is Ganymede and it is larger than the planet Mercury. I bring this up to illustrate my point, there are a lot of places in our solar system which might be home to life besides planets.

Getting back to water covered worlds, Europa is another moon of Jupiter which is believed to have an ocean under its surface. It is only slightly smaller than our own moon. It is believed by scientists sea salt may be covering some of the features on Europa. Scientists love to find water, because they believe it is the key to life. If scientists are correct and Europa does contain water, there is a good chance life may exist in its oceans. It has been suggested when Europa orbits Jupiter, Jupiter exerts so much force on it, it causes expansion and contraction which in turn causes heat. The waters on Europa could be warmer than we expect, making the chances for life even greater. One never knows what could be found. Scientists are hoping for some type of microscopic life and maybe even fish, but there could be more down there. Who is to say intelligent life can’t develop in an ocean? The obstacles which stand in our way are created by our technology. As our technology advances we may be able to defeat these obstacles and finally find out what is on Europa.

Another moon which scientists believe has water on it is Enceladus. Enceladus is one of Saturn’s moons. The Cassini spacecraft recently took some close-up photos of Enceladus and scientists are quite amazed at what it found. It found water and chemicals which were necessary for life including even oxygen in its deep ocean. Chances for life here are very exciting and it is easy to see why. I don’t think scientists who thought about the existence of life years ago paid much attention the chance for life they were thinking about could exist on a moon. They concentrated on the planets. This is not to say they were wrong thinking life could exist on one of the planets in our solar system, I am just saying they didn’t really consider the moons in our solar system as a source of life. We have found out life is very tough and can exist in places we never would’ve believed, such as the boiling hot waters of thermal vents and the freezing cold of outer space. Knowing this, it is not out of the question to think life might exist on Enceladus.

Another large moon of Jupiter has become a candidate for containing oceans and that moon is Ganymede. The Hubble telescope analyzed the light coming from that moon and scientists became convinced there is a good chance oceans exist under the surface. They will be sending other missions to this moon to check out their findings. When Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flew past Ganymede years ago they detected grooves and furrows on this moon which led scientists to think they may have been created by water which could have been bubbling up. When the magnetic field was measured it also led to the conclusion of water being present. Here is the kicker, if all measurements are correct Ganymede may contain more water than our entire earth. If this is true it will certainly be a shock.

When we look for water in our solar system we find there are a few other places which may have it. These places have indications that it may exist, but we just can’t be sure yet. One is Callisto another moon of Jupiter. Wouldn’t it be strange if Jupiter was the home to several moons containing life? Some of Saturn’s moons have shown promise for water and one is named Dione. The reason scientists think this moon might have water is the fact geologically it shows it had a warmer past and some scientists believe it is still warm enough to retain water. Of all the strange place which are believed to have water, Pluto and its moon may be the strangest. It was demoted from a planet to dwarf planet several years ago. It is mostly ice and scientists believe there is a chance under that ice is an ocean. Ceres is an inhabitant of the asteroid belt and it was thought just to be another large rock, but recently those ideas have changed and some scientists believe it is actually a dwarf planet and it contains water.

We have found many different places in our solar system which contain at least water vapors. It is beginning to look like finding water might be much more of a common thing than we suspected. Scientists are saying even Mars may have underground lakes or oceans. If water turns out to be the basis for life, what can we expect as far as finding out if life exists as we search for it? If we look at our solar system as an example of other solar systems we may have to conclude life might be a lot more plentiful than we first expected. We can’t be sure of this yet however, since we would have to go to some of these places and check out the water to see if life was in it. Perhaps having water is not enough to produce life even though scientists are all excited about finding it. There may be some other requirement we don’t know about yet.

There is a part of our solar system which is still a mystery to us and it exists well beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. We suspect there could be some large planets out there. This area is called the Oart Cloud. Originally it was believed it was composed of rocky objects and comets, but now scientists are more amenable to the idea it could contain planets. If it does, who knows if any of them have life on them or not? It could turn out we are not alone in the solar system and we don’t have to go to other solar systems just to find life.