Foreword
Water Worlds in the Solar System, Exploring Prospects
of Extraterrestrial Habitability & Life is a very useful
and interesting book for scientists, teachers, and students
from various disciplines of science. Dr. Antony Joseph has
explored broad and complex range of topics extensively
and intensively from the core of the Earth and bottom
of the oceans to the vast expanses of some of the Solar
System bodies, critically exploring geological, geophysi-
cal, physical, geochemical, astronomical, astrophysical,
biological, and biochemical aspects. This book has opened
up a great new horizon for exploration of water and the
possibility of life on some extraterrestrial celestial bodies
in our Solar System. Several high-quality illustrations are
provided. He has also added some videos in the e-book.
Furthermore, text- and picture-specific web sites are pro-
vided, which give additional resources and extends the
chapters of the text to the resources of World Wide Web.
A large variety of topics have been introduced and pre-
sented in this book in such a simple and engrossing style
that even nonspecialist people who have an interest in the
topics of life and extraterrestrial water worlds can under-
stand and enjoy reading this book. When I went through
the manuscript of this book, I found it to be a thought-pro-
voking and overwhelmingly impressive multidisciplinary
endeavor of its own kind.
Dr. Antony Joseph is a scientist who had a long oceano-
graphic career associated with CSIR-National Institute of
Oceanography (CSIR-NIO), Goa, India, from February
1978 to 31 July 2012. He participated in numerous oceano-
graphic cruises onboard research vessels. He had opportuni-
ties to see several types of remarkable marine creatures; and
examine the intricacies of the seafloor, some of the oceano-
graphic processes, and several valuable living and nonliving
resources.
Apart from authoring the present book Dr. Joseph has
authored three other oceanographic books published by
Elsevier, New York. He has to his credit chapters in edited
books, articles in Encyclopedias, and research papers. He
has presented several research papers at various Science &
Technology Conferences conducted in India and abroad.
He was also a faculty member at the Indian Academy of
Scientific and Innovative Research during his career at
CSIR-NIO. That is why this book is very friendly to stu-
dents, teachers, and researchers.
His vast interdisciplinary knowledge and broad range
of interests, making difficult subjects easy to understand;
and his excitement about various topics from different dis-
ciplines of science have made it a spellbound multidisci-
plinary book useful for the purpose of both teaching and
research. He addresses all the topics from various disciplines
so extensively. My admiration for this book is extraordinary
and stupendous. I congratulate him for authoring such a
multidisciplinary book.
The author begins with addressing the very interesting
and elegant aspects of Solar/Planetary formation and evo-
lution. It makes sense that most large planets in our Solar
System stay near the ecliptic plane. Our Solar System is
believed to be about 4.6 billion years old. It is thought to
have arisen from an amorphous cloud of gas and dust in
space. The original cloud was spinning, and this spin caused
it to flatten out into a disk shape, rather than a spherical
shape. The Sun and planets are believed to have formed out
of this disk, which is why, today, the planets still orbit in a
single plane around our Sun.
In consonance with the title, the book provides a brief
overview of the water-abundant celestial bodies in the Solar
System which could possibly be habitable for life. Life, as
we know it, is based on carbon chemistry operating in an
aqueous environment. Life is supposed to have originated
in the Earth’s oceans’ water when chemical composition of
the primordial ocean and the atmosphere was very different
from what it is today. It is a consensus belief among scien-
tists that the origin of life and the associated biological evo-
lution was preceded by chemical evolution, which resulted
in the production of organic molecules—the building
blocks of life. Thousands and millions of molecules were
assembled into structures exhibiting key properties of liv-
ing things: metabolism, respiration, reproduction, and the
transfer of genetic information. It is highly likely that life
arose in water and that the necessary building blocks were
organic compounds. The origin of water on the Earth has
been described in much details in a very interesting manner
in this book.
The panspermia hypothesis states that the seeds of life
exist all over the universe and can be propagated through
space from one location to another. For millennia, this idea
has been a topic of philosophical debate. However, due to
lack of any validation, it remained merely speculative until
xix
xx Foreword
few decades ago. It is only with the recent discoveries and
advances from different fields of research that panspermia
has been given serious scientific consideration. Most of the
major barriers against the acceptance of panspermia have
been demolished when it has been shown that microorgan-
isms can survive the high impact and velocity experienced
during the ejection from one planet, the journey through
space, and the impact process onto another world.
“Search for life” researchers are optimistic about the
possible existence of life on some other planets and moons
(e.g., Mars, Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, Saturn’s icy moons
Enceladus and Titan) and even some extra-solar celestial
bodies. While discoveries of liquid water bodies on a couple
of distant extraterrestial planets and moons are encouraging
news, the Year-2018 discovery of subsurface liquid water
lake on our nearest planet Mars is a good reason for extra
cheers to every extraterrestrial enthusiast. The year-2021
discovery of macro- and mega-benthic communities far
beneath an Antarctic ice shelf sheds optimism in terms of
its astrobiological implications.
A biosignature is any substance, element, molecule or
feature that can be used as evidence for past or present life.
Biosignatures can also be organic molecules made by life.
Another types of biosignatures are stromatolites which are
microbial mats in shallow waters creating layered structures
of minerals. Fossilized versions of microbial mats from bil-
lions of years ago are found today. Study of life here on
Earth and knowing about the kinds of biosignatures will
help us a lot as we keep questioning ourselves if we’re alone
in the universe and whether or not we might find signs of
life on other celestial bodies. Dr. Antony has described in
details about biosignatures in a separate chapter of his cur-
rent book.
Extinction events in Earth’s history, and Palaeocene–
Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) event that occurred
∼56 million years ago (Mya) resulting into the estimated
global temperature increase in the range of 5–8°C, has also
been described very well in this book. Serpentinization,
which is the process of formation of serpentine minerals
and considered to be responsible for CH4 generation, con-
tributed the bricks and mortar for many prebiotic reactions
that could have led to the first proto-organisms. The pro-
cess of serpentinization, as observed along mid-ocean ridge
and producing hydrothermal fluids, gaseous methane and
hydrogen, has received much attention by the astrobiolo-
gists.
Moon-forming impacts might have played a crucial role
in the origin of Earth’s atmosphere and ocean’s water as
well as some of the environmental conditions of the early
Earth, which might have influenced the origin and evolu-
tion of life. Scientists now have reliable information that
it is the cosmological evolution which has guided matter
from simplicity to complexity; from inorganic to organic;
and the origin and evolution of life which is a natural result
of the evolution of that matter. How the warping of cosmic
fabric of space-time can guide origin and evolution of life
is described in Kumar’s hypothesis which affirms that the
organization of DNA molecule—the blueprint of life—is
correlated to the astronomical organization of planets and
moons in the Solar System through an elegant mathematical
relationship. Life is supposed to have started immediately
after the original accretion of the Earth, with a period of
chemical evolution in a reducing primitive atmosphere of
the newly formed Earth which resulted in the formation of
small organic molecules that constitutes the building blocks
essential for life; namely, amino acids, nucleic acids.
Evidence for biological activity can be derived from car-
bon isotopes because a high 12C/13C ratio is characteristic
of biogenic carbon. Microfossil record only extends to ∼3.5
BYA and the chemofossil record to ∼3.8 BYA. Besides
this, evidence of life on the Earth is manifestly preserved
in the rock record as well. Given the temporal limits of
rock record (∼4 billion years), the detrital zircons as old as
4.38 billion years have been documented. Zircons, serving
as time capsules, can capture and preserve their environ-
ment. There are reports on 12C/13C of graphite preserved in
4.1 billion years old zircon grains imaged by transmission
X-ray microscopy. The carbon contained in the zircon has
a characteristic signature—a specific 12C/13C ratio—that
indicates the presence of photosynthetic life. So, the most
recent research reported argue that the graphite’s 12C-rich
isotopic signature may be evidence for the origin of life
on the Earth by 4.1 BYA, based on examination of zircons
discovered from Jack Hills, West Australia. The discovery
indicates that life may have begun shortly after the Planet
formed 4.54 BYA.
Scientists are of the view that atoms, stars and galaxies
self-assembled out of the fundamental particles produced
by Big Bang. Different combinations of the atoms compose
both the inanimate and the living worlds. Life is a complex
system of atoms and molecules undergoing natural selec-
tion. The search for life on other extraterrestrial worlds is
often based on the strategy of finding the water. The research
further suggests that life in the Universe could be abundant.
Simple life on the Earth appears to have formed quickly,
but it likely took many millions of years to evolve complex
organisms. Keeping in view of the core subject matter of
this book being “Water Worlds in the Solar System,” a brief
overview of the water-abundant celestial bodies in the Solar
System is given adequate attention, highlighting the impor-
tance of understanding Earth’s oceans in the search for
microbial life in extraterrestrial ocean worlds. Dr. Antony
Joseph has written the present comprehensive and scholarly
reference book on complex topics addressed in 17 chapters.
Surprisingly, the question of the origin of Earth’s Moon
remained unresolved even after the scientifically produc-
tive Apollo missions, and it was only in the early 1980s
that a model emerged—the Giant-Impact hypothesis—that

eventually gained the support of most lunar scientists. It
is now well recognized that during the formation of the
Solar System, the Earth and the other terrestrial planets
(i.e., Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars that are composed
primarily of silicate rocks or metals) accreted in a gas-free
environment, mostly from volatile-depleted planetesimals
which were already differentiated into metallic cores and
silicate mantles.
There are several celestial bodies in our Solar System
where water is abundant and in most cases the surface water
is in the form of frozen solid ice, and the liquid water is
stored in subsurface oceans. It is now known that Earth’s
Moon possesses water not only in its poles and regolith, but
also in its interior. Lunar scientists think that the caves and
large tunnel complexes discovered on Earth’s Moon could
be harboring some form of life; they can even be potential
sites for human settlement.
Earth’s neighboring planet Mars was once rich in water.
In the past, water had caused substantial erosion of the
Martian surface, including extensive channeling and asso-
ciated transport and deposition of material. It was found
that water is present at the poles and in permafrost regions
of Mars. Therefore, scientists think that this body of water
could be a possible habitat for microbial life.
Near-Earth asteroid Ceres has given several indications
favoring the presence of water. Jupiter’s icy moons contain
vast quantities of liquid water. Ganymede and Europa are
known to possess oxygen and water. There are scientific rea-
sons to believe that a liquid-water ocean lies hidden within
Europa’s hard ice shell. Search-for-life researchers consider
that there are prospects of extant life on Europa. Apart from
Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa, two of Saturn’s
moons Enceladus and Titan are also known to possess
conducive environments to support microbial life. There
is striking resemblance of Enceladus’s organics-rich ocean
to Earth’s primitive prebiotic ocean, indicating a favorable
scenario for life’s emergence on Enceladus. The researchers
have postulated a strong possibility of finding biomolecules
on Titan. Neptune’s moon Triton and the dwarf planet Pluto
orbiting in the outer periphery of the Solar System are also
endowed with the ocean of liquid water.
Microbes living at submarine hydrothermal vents do not
depend on sunlight or oxygen. They grow around the vents
and feed upon hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) and dissolved
minerals to produce organic material through the process
of chemosynthesis. There are some extraterrestrial ocean
worlds, in which submarine hydrothermal vents are present
on the seafloor (e.g., Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus). When
considering the habitability of an ocean world, especially
one far from the Sun where photosynthesis is unlikely to be
effective, a key issue is the nature of the underlying seafloor
and water–rock interactions (e.g., submarine hydrothermal
vent environment). Although the full diversity of settings
observed on the Earth may not be repeated on any single
Foreword xxi
other ocean world, an advantage provided by our home
planet—Earth—is the opportunity to conduct a wealth of
analogue studies spanning a broad range of conditions that
may be relevant to other ocean worlds in terms of seafloor
pressure, maximum water temperatures at those pressures,
and interactions with different rock types. It is pertinent to
note that the Earth’s mid-ocean ridges (where most of the
hydrothermal vents are located) remain 80% unexplored.
NASA’s Ocean Worlds Exploration Program (OWEP)
envisages to explore ocean worlds in the outer Solar System
bodies that could possess subsurface oceans to assess their
habitability and to seek biosignatures of simple extrater-
restrial life. The various projects undertaken by the United
States’ NASA, European Space Agency (ESA) and some
universities and space research organizations from various
countries to search for planets that can sustain life has led to
an increased curiosity in the 21st century about life beyond
Earth.
When it comes to the topic of life, based on DNA
sequence comparisons and structural and biochemical com-
parisons, all living organisms are categorize into three pri-
mary domains; namely, Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya (or
Eukaryotes). Both Bacteria and Archaea are prokaryotes,
single-celled microorganisms with no nuclei, and Eukarya
includes humans and all other animals, plants, fungi, and
single-celled protists—all organisms whose cells have
nuclei to enclose their DNA apart from the rest of the cell.
The fossil record indicates that the first living organisms
were prokaryotes, and eukaryotes evolved billion years
later.
Because life on Earth depends on a variety of biochemi-
cal respiratory chains involving electron transport, it has
been argued that the presence of electrochemical gradients
is one of the most critical prerequisites for life’s initiation
forming intense selection pressures on initial evolution.
Genetic analysis of the respiratory chains in the Archaea,
Eukarya, and Bacteria indicates that terminal oxidases are
linked to oxygen, nitrate, sulfate, and sulfur which were all
present in the last common ancestor (LCA) of living organ-
isms. Note that oxidase is an enzyme which promotes the
transfer of a hydrogen atom from a particular substrate to
an oxygen molecule, forming water or hydrogen peroxide.
It is believed that our LCA must have evolved on a
world in which these redox (oxidation and reduction con-
sidered together as complementary processes) gradients
were present in large enough quantities to evolve and to be
maintained, and in which metastable, energetic compounds
could diffuse across redox boundaries. Because the effi-
ciency of biological systems tends to improve over time as
a result of the processes of random mutation and natural
selection as propounded by Charles Darwin in 1859, primi-
tive metabolic electron transport systems likely could not
extract energy as efficiently from the redox couples as do
those of modern organisms. Based on these observations
xxii Foreword
it is argued that life is more likely to have evolved on the
planet that had the broadest dynamical range of electro-
chemical species early in its history.
Oxygenic photosynthesis is Earth’s dominant metabo-
lism, having evolved to harvest the largest expected energy
source at the surface of most terrestrial habitable zone plan-
ets. Using CO2 and H2O-molecules that are expected to be
abundant and widespread on habitable terrestrial planets,
oxygenic photosynthesis is plausible as a significant plan-
etary process with a global impact. It is evident that the
production of oxygen or oxidizing power radically changed
Earth’s surface and atmosphere during the Proterozoic Eon,
making it less reducing than the conditions prevalent during
the Archean. In addition to ancient rocks, our reconstruction
of Earth’s redox evolution is informed by our knowledge of
biogeochemical cycles catalyzed by extant biota.
All life is organized as cells. Physical compartmenta-
tion from the environment and self-organization of self-
contained redox reactions are the most conserved attributes
of living things, hence inorganic matter with such attributes
would be life’s most likely forebear. It has been widely sug-
gested that life based around carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen is the only plausible biochemistry, and specifically
that terrestrial biochemistry of nucleic acids, proteins, and
sugars is likely to be "universal." It is argued that many
chemistries could be used to build living systems, and that
it is the nature of the liquid in which life evolves that defines
the most appropriate chemistry.
Water (a good solvent) plays an important role is sus-
taining life as we know it. For temperate, terrestrial planets,
the presence of water is of great importance as an indicator
of habitable conditions. Water is a good solvent, primarily
because it is liquid at high temperature, and secondarily
because of its chemical properties (polar, high dielectric
constant). In a water molecule, two charges are present with
a negative charge in the middle, and a positive charge at
the ends. Thus, a water molecule (which is a polar inor-
ganic compound) possesses an electric dipole moment,
with a negatively charged end and a positively charged end.
Polarity underlies a number of physical properties including
surface tension, solubility, and melting and boiling points.
Water is the most abundant substance on Earth and the only
common substance to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas on
Earth’s surface. It is also the third most abundant molecule
in the universe. Liquid water is both a crucial source of oxy-
gen and a useful solvent for the generation of biomolecules.
Life is supposed to be a material system that undergoes
reproduction, mutation, and natural selection. Probably the
simplest, but not the only, proof of life is to find something
that is alive. There are only two properties that can deter-
mine if an object is alive: metabolism (an organism’s life
functions, biomass increase, and reproduction) and motion.
All living things require some level of metabolism. Life
is basically a chemical system that is able to transfer its
molecular information via self-replication and to evolve via
mutations. Mutation is the change in the structure of a gene
(DNA), resulting in a variant form which may be transmit-
ted to subsequent generations.
Studies in extreme ambient conditions have changed
the previous paradigm that life can only be found on pleas-
ant Earth-like planets. In the last few decades, substantial
changes have occurred regarding what scientists consider
the limits of habitable environmental conditions. Our
knowledge about extreme environments and the limits of
life on Earth has greatly improved in recent decades. These
advances have been fundamental to the development of
astrobiology, which studies the origin, evolution, and dis-
tribution of life in the Universe. Numerous planetary bod-
ies and moons in our Solar System have been suggested to
sustain life (e.g., Mars, Europa, Enceladus).
Submarine seafloor hydrothermal vents are considered
to have an important role in the emergence and persistence
of life not only on Earth but also on worlds beyond Earth.
Simulations of hydrothermal vent to study origin of life on
the early Earth, Early Mars, and the Icy Moons of the outer
planets have been done in the Laboratory. Discovery of the
indications of hydrothermal vents adorning the subsurface
seafloors of Enceladus and Europa is suggestive of the pos-
sibility of life & habitability.
Relevant information about a wide variety of terrestrial
and extraterrestrial topics has been included in this book.
New descendants of scientists are paying more attention
to multidisciplinary approaches of research. We have got
to acquire more knowledge, and encourage publication of
more such multidisciplinary books. I believe that this book
is an excellent piece of work worthy of finding a place in
every library.
Prof. (Dr.) Arbind Kumar
Head and Director (Retired)
P. G. Department of Zoology,
Patna Science College Campus,
Patna University,
Patna, Bihar, India
September 28, 2022