jellyfish!

Hello, I'm Ian O'Neill, Space Producer for DiscoveryNews.com, and I'm commandeering the

DNews studio to talk a little about aliens... or more specifically, potential alien worlds

that could support life.

You may have heard all the kerfuffle about Kepler-186f. This Earth-sized exoplanet was

discovered orbiting its red dwarf star within the habitable zone.

This is exciting because IF the exoplanet is rocky and IF it has water, there's a good

chance that its atmosphere could keep the water in a liquid state AND possibly support

life. This is the first Earth-sized exoplanet discovered inside a star's habitable zone!

Awesome, awesome, awesome discovery!

Kepler-186f was detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, but it's not really a discovery

of a "second Earth" -- we simply do not know if that world is as barren and cold as Mars

or a broiling hellhole like Venus, two worlds, by the way, that orbit the sun in its habitable

zone, but are FAR from being habitable.

So, for me, there's another really cool possibility for potential life-giving worlds out there

in the galaxy other than looking for habitable exoplanets, and it doesn't depend on how far

away from the heat of their star they are.

Remember the world of Pandora in the epic movie Avatar? Well, that wasn't an exoplanet,

it was in fact a moon orbiting a massive exoplanet. These moons are what astronomers call "exomoons."

Our solar system has some fascinating moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn that, may not

look like the science fiction rainforest moon of Pandora, but they do have vast sub-surface

oceans beneath their frozen crusts -- the water is heated to a liquid by tidal forces

squeezing the insides of the moon creating a heat source -- no sunlight required!

Jupiter's moon Europa, for example, has an ocean and some astrobiologists think that

the environment is ideal for not only microbial life to thrive, but complex organisms may

be evolving there.

If you've seen the movie Europa Report, you'll know what I mean. If you haven't seen it,

I won't spoil the ending. Promise.

Also, most recently, it was revealed that Saturn's moon Enceladus also has a subsurface

ocean and its internal tidal heating drives the dinky world's famous water plumes, so

there could be some kind of cosy life-giving environment there too.

Earlier this month, astronomers made the first ever detection of a moon in orbit around an

exoplanet. They discovered it using the cool method of "microlensing" -- that's when a

planet or star passes in front of a distant star, briefly amplifying the starlight. Astronomers

saw a little bump next to the lightcurve of the microlensing event. They believe that

this bump is the first direct observation of a moon in orbit around an exoplanet.

Although there was little doubt that exomoons do exist, it's always awesome to get some

observational evidence.

There's no word about whether or not this exomoon has any habitable qualities like Europa

or Enceladus, but I can't help but wonder about what may appear to be frozen exomoons

that actually have hidden oceans containing life.

Time to launch some ice drills to Europa, for, you know, research. Just don't take a

swim.

Does this get you excited for the next exomoon discovery? Tell us in the comments below,

and don't forget to subscribe for more DNews.