Pith Number

pith:DWRQVQJZ

pith:2026:DWRQVQJZMG5M6TOQELSAZ43RJM

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

A framework for evaluating biosignature potential against the abiotic baseline on ocean worlds

Barbara Sherwood Lollar, Charles S. Cockell, Lucas M. Fifer, Oliver Warr, Peter M. Higgins, Wanying Kang, Weibin Chen

Uncertainties in abiotic processes prevent definitive biosignature detection from isotopic measurements on Enceladus.

arxiv:2605.15337 v1 · 2026-05-14 · astro-ph.EP

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{DWRQVQJZMG5M6TOQELSAZ43RJM}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

uncertainties in abiotic processes currently prevent hypothetical future δ¹³C_CO2 and δ¹³C_CH4 measurements from definitively inferring a biosphere on Enceladus.

C2weakest assumption

That existing models of abiotic processes on Enceladus are adequate to quantify baseline uncertainties and overlaps with potential biosignatures, as required for the assessment of isotopic and chiral signals.

C3one line summary

A quantitative framework is introduced to evaluate biosignature potential against abiotic baselines on ocean worlds, demonstrating that uncertainties prevent definitive life inference from isotopes or chirality on Enceladus and highlighting risks of false negatives.

References

12 extracted · 12 resolved · 0 Pith anchors

[1] Cometary. CH4 and methanol make up the bulk of organic material in the ices of molecular clouds which formed the solar system bodies89, so may have been trapped in clathrates in the planetesimals that 2009 · doi:10.1038/s41550-021-01372-6

[2] Biosignature Threshold 2017 · doi:10.1144/jgs2021-134

[3] Khawaja, N. et al. Low-mass nitrogen-, oxygen-bearing, and aromatic compounds in Enceladean ice grains. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 489, 5231–5243 (2019). 25. Waite, J. H. et al. 2019 · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2020.114248

[4] Horita, J. & Berndt, M. E. Abiogenic Methane Formation and Isotopic Fractionation Under Hydrothermal Conditions. Science 285, 1055–1057 (1999). 37. Taran, Y . A., Kliger, G. A., Cienfuegos, E. & Shuyk 1999

[5] Glein, C. R., Postberg, F . & Vance, S. D. The Geochemistry of Enceladus: Composition and Controls. in Enceladus and the Icy Moons of Saturn (eds Schenk, P . M., Clark, R. N., Howett, C. J. A., Verbis 2018 · doi:10.2458/azu_uapress_9780816537075-ch003

Formal links

2 machine-checked theorem links

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-20T00:00:53.264631Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

1da30ac13961bacf4dd022e40cf3714b371212cbd118211b92d231702516d413

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.15337 · arxiv_version: 2605.15337v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.15337 · pith_short_12: DWRQVQJZMG5M · pith_short_16: DWRQVQJZMG5M6TOQ · pith_short_8: DWRQVQJZ

Agent API

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Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/DWRQVQJZMG5M6TOQELSAZ43RJM \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 1da30ac13961bacf4dd022e40cf3714b371212cbd118211b92d231702516d413

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "a1b2869acdb351639f945e5fd1f268e826285c788a98f07a06c2e33d8f2c9d25",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
    "primary_cat": "astro-ph.EP",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-14T19:00:57Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "df23cdd22b95109a60140db157312e8e00eaee63b59fa517283dafd986ac45f7"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.15337",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}