Huge ‘plume’ seen coming out of nearby moon that could support alien life

A vast plume has been seen coming out Enceladus, one of Jupiter’s moons.

The satellite is one of the best hopes for finding life outside our own planet. It has salty water and other conditions that leave scientists to believe that it could support alien life.

Now the James Webb Space Telescope has watched a vast plume being ejected out of the planet. It found that the water shooting out of the planet is more than 20 times the size of the moon itself.

Researchers already knew that jets of water were spurting out of Enceladus. But the vast size of the one found by Webb led researchers to wonder whether they had made a mistake.

“When I was looking at the data, at first, I was thinking I had to be wrong. It was just so shocking to detect a water plume more than 20 times the size of the moon,” said lead author Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The water plume extends far beyond its release region at the southern pole.”