- Charon, the tiny moon discovered 20 years
ago orbiting Pluto, is the latest candidate in the search for extraterrestrial
life.
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- The little, dim satellite and its barely
visible parent planet are at the edge of the solar system, more than 2.6
billion miles from the Sun - but Nasa scientists now think one of them
may be warm enough for life.
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- Astronomers believe there have been four
possible homes for life in our solar system at some point in history, David
DesMarais of the Nasa Ames Research centre told the American Association
for the Advancement of Science meeting.
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- They were Mars, Venus, Jupiter's moon
Europa, and now Charon. A Nasa team announced two years ago they thought
they had found fossil evidence of life in a meteorite from Mars.
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- The Galileo satellite orbiting the moons
of Jupiter has sent back pictures which hint at a ocean under the ice of
Europa.
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- The confirmation that microbial life
on Earth could be 3.8 billion years old suggested that life might have
had time to form on Venus before it was wiped out by a runaway greenhouse
effect.
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- Pluto is so small, faint and far away
that it was only discovered 60 years ago: astronomers are still debating
whether it actually qualifies for the title of planet.
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- Charon was not seen until 1978, but although
it is 30 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun, it could have warmth:
the little moon and its twin planet Pluto are only 12,000 miles apart.
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- Scientists calculate that the tidal forces
set up by that mutual dance would create enough heat in the interior of
Charon to permit water to become liquid.
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- There are plans for a mission to Pluto
- the journey would take 10 years - and designs to send a robot submarine
hundreds of metres through the ice of Europa.
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