[FormerACLUmember]

[EagleUSA]

The latest report I heard was that they determined that the geysers were not water, but pure GIN. Right after that, Teddy Kennedy announced complete funding for a mission to the Saturn moon, which he has unoffically named "WC".

[frogjerk]

"Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone."

It's that "warm" on Enceladus?

[FreedomNeocon]

The question of IF there is extraterrestrial life is not a hard one to answer.

OF COURSE there is life outside earth. We've studied like 4 planets... we've "glanced" a dozen more. And on those we've already found evidence of water and rivers, and microbiological organisms in the planets past, and now geysers currently on moons of Saturn shooting water into the air.

There ere are billions of billions of billions of planets in the in the universe, we've seen .00000000000000000000000000000000000001% of them, and 'discovered' even less.

The question of "is there no life other than Earth" is an absurd one... it is virtually guaranteed mathematically. Most people just aren't able to conceive of just how large the universe actually is. I would also argue is it virtually guaranteed (if you factor in passage of time greater towards the center of the universe) that intelligent life is much more rare, but also guaranteed.

The better questions, is how can intelligent species ever hope to traverse the IMMENSE distance between solar systems and galaxies, where even 'light' takes hundreds and thousands of light years (at the short end), which gets into bending space-time by exploiting 'weak' force emitted from decaying element255 bombarded with specific radiation. (or at least so the urban legend goes... ;) )

[Angus MacGregor]

I'm guessing that with this "discovery" NASA will need another,oh lets say, $995,000,000,000,000.

[Migraine]

"However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms,"

Why is it always about extraterrestrial life? I mean, in the utter absence of the slightest evidence of it, why are "living organisms" always at the core of interest? Why not: "there may be postage stamps up there", or something equally desultory? The only possible explanation for this obsession has to be the faith-based axioms, postulates and corollaries of evolutionary thought.
I say, let's just explore all the places we can explore, find what we can find, and announce our findings -- regardless of what those findings are. Because it's there. Knowledge is good, as long as it's true. No agendas allowed, though. No need to interpolate spontaneous life elsewhere just because it supposedly happened here.

[Muleteam1]

>>High-resolution images of Enceladus from Cassini "show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed," NASA said. <<

Enceladian whales perhaps?