Soluble Organic Precursors to Amino Acids Detected in Enceladus Ice Grains from Reanalyzed Cassini Data

To the point

Nozair Khawaja, Jon Hillier, and Frank Postberg report that Enceladus’s vented ice grains contain soluble organic compounds that could be building blocks for amino acids, formed when ocean organics dissolved in the moon condensed onto the grains as they vented, with hydrothermal vents potentially providing the energy for the reactions and suggesting Enceladus could have the chemistry needed for life.