A component necessary for the origin of life was discovered on the moon of Saturn

On the icy moon of Saturn called Enceladus, they discovered sodium phosphates, which are necessary for the birth of biological life. Study this was published in the journal Nature.

The chemical was found in a plume of frozen water on the satellite. Moreover, its concentration there turned out to be hundreds of times higher than in the waters of the Earth.

This element is responsible for making DNA and RNA, cell membranes, and bones and teeth in mammals. And for the first time there was confirmation of its existence outside the earth's oceans.

Science already knows that Enceladus has carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. For the complete set necessary for the origin of life, only phosphates were missing. Now the authors of the study do not exclude that they are widely represented on other ice satellites. In theory, this could mean that they are all inhabited.

The Cassini probe was launched in 1997. Before his crash six years ago, he managed to transmit the collected information to Earth. All these years it was stored on NASA servers, and only recently it was handed over for study by scientists from the Free University of Berlin (Germany).