Wow!  If this turns out to be correct, it could revolutionize the possibilities of life on other planets.

NASA has found evidence that suggests there is liquid water on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.  Such a possibility offers the prospect of life-sustaining water on cosmic bodies heretofore considered unlivable.  Liquid water on a moon the size of Enceladus expands by leaps and bounds the environments wherein life might exist, in this case within our own solar system, and overall within the scope of extrasolar planets already and yet to be discovered.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about this mysterious moon.

“We realize that this is a radical conclusion — that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. “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.”

No, this is not a smoking gun for alien life, but it raises a helluva lot of questions, and it provides answers for some that rock to their foundation our basic assumptions about where life in the universe might exist.