Gliese 581e


A Moon Made Of Lightweight Fluff! Methone is small and oval--and unlike other tiny objects, composed of rock and ice, that scurry around our Solar System. Methone, which was observed up close for the very first time in 2012, is not pockmarked by impacts like other worldlets of its kind. Instead, this strange little moon, is very smooth--it shows not a hill nor an impact crater anywhere on its weirdly smooth surface. This shiny, white, icy egg in Space, residing in a peaceful nest of ice crystals, is an enigma wrapped in a bewildering mystery that some astronomers may have solved. The answer to the bewitching riddle of Methone? It is composed of lightweight fluff! Life as we know it depends on the presence of three ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, mainly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. With this new discovery of the existence of hydrogen, in the tattle-tale plume shooting out from the surface of Enceladus, Cassini has revealed to the prying eyes of curious astronomers, that this small, icy moon has almost all of these ingredients important for habitability. At this point, Cassini has not detected the presence of phosphorus and sulfur in the hidden subsurface ocean of this distant small world, but many planetary scientists suspect that they will eventually be detected because the rocky core of Enceladus is believed to be similar to certain meteorities that contain these two critical elements. So, what exactly are those effects, you might ask? During the monthly new moon and full moon phases, all other factors being the same, you will catch more and bigger fish. This remains true for about 2 days on either side of the peak phases.