Saturn: a brief guide

In the wake of claims that there may be life on one of its moons, John Crace offers a primer on our sixth planet In pictures: Visions of Saturn It's being touted as a stunning find. After decades of searching the outer limits of space for signs of life, it's been hiding away right under our noses all along. After Nasa's Cassini spacecraft picked up sodium salts near the south pole of Enceladus, Saturn's smallest moon, scientists believe there may be water beneath the surface. Just as Earth's oceans became salty after prolonged contact with rocks, so Nasa believes these sodium deposits are indicative of hitherto unknown underground reservoirs. And where there's water, there may be life. "We need three ingredients for life, as far as we know - liquid water, energy and the basic chemical building blocks," says John Spencer, a Cassini...

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