Astrophysicists working with NASA's Saturn sweeping Cassini spacecraft have just announced that Enceladus has a warm ocean at its southern pole with ongoing hydrothermal activity—the first ever discovered outside of Earth. A new study published online Wednesday, March 11, 2015, in the journal... (Associated Press) 
 
 If confirmed, it would make the moon Enceladus (ehn-SEHL'-uh-duhs) the only other known body in the solar system besides Earth where hot water and rocks interact underground. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below 
 
 "We now have very strong evidence that there is a hot hydrothermal environment at the base of Enceladus's ocean, perhaps like those where we believe life began on Earth," says Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell University who works with the Cassini spacecraft but was not involved in the new research. In the latest study, a group led by Cassini team member Sean Hsu of the University of Colorado in Boulder used spacecraft observations and computer modeling to show that the plume is connected to what's happening on the lunar sea floor. He and his colleagues estimated the temperature, salinity, and approximate pH of Enceladus's ocean by studying the dust in Saturn's outermost ring. "If you could swim a little bit further from the really hot part then it could be comfy." These particles point toward warm waters on Enceladus. Here's what these particles revealed about Enceladus's deep ocean: The water is less than 4 percent salinity, has a pH between 8.5 and 10.5 (Earth's ranged between 8.0 to 8.3 before the industrial revolution), and is at least 200 degrees Fahrenheit at hot springs at the bottom of the ocean where the particles are forged. Unlike thermal activity on Earth, which is powered by our hot, churning core, Enceladus's heat is created by gravitational friction from the pull of Saturn and its other moons. All of the new information we're gleaning about Enceladus (and all of Saturn's moons) comes from the Cassini spacecraft, which was developed in the late '80s and early '90s.
– Thanks to the Cassini spacecraft, we already knew that one of Saturn's moons has a big ocean. Now things have gotten more interesting on Enceladus. It turns out that the ocean is not only warm, it seems to have the same kind of hydrothermal activity going on as oceans on Earth, reports NASA. Bottom line: "This may be the place to go look for life in the outer solar system," says a Cornell scientist not involved with the new study in Nature. That would be microbial life, under conditions similar to those in a network of hot springs under the Atlantic Ocean known as the "Lost City," reports AP. Some scientists think that ancient hydrothermal field yielded the first life on our planet. Some extra-terrestrial sleuthing resulted in the Enceladus discovery: Knowing that a geyser shooting up from the moon's south pole sends up dust particles that settle on Saturn's outer ring, researchers analyzed the outer ring. They discovered that the dust particles were mostly silica, explains Popular Mechanics, and the makeup of that silica yielded details about the ocean in which they were formed. "We think that the temperature at least in some part of the ocean must be higher than 190 degrees Fahrenheit," team member Sean Hsu tells NPR. "If you could swim a little bit further from the really hot part then it could be comfy." The only way to "nail the habitability question" is to send up a new spacecraft to Enceladus with more modern instruments, says the Cornell researcher. He's already working on the proposal. (Read about how Pluto might rejoin the planet club.)