Subject species has formally conceded, after 154 standard orbits of insistence to the contrary, that its ancestors were not lone warriors stabbing each other in a swamp but rather a damp roommate arrangement clustered around a hot underwater rock.
The reframe is being marketed as a discovery. Per the Outer Arm Bureau of Belated Realizations, this lands at 0.7 epiphanies per century, which is roughly average for a species that also recently noticed its gut contains other organisms.
Of note: one Rowan Hooper has published a book arguing "togetherness" was neglected. Neglected by whom is unstated. The vents in question are described by biochemist Nick Lane as pores where "geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry" — a sentence the bipeds find moving and which translates, in our dialect, to "wet rock did the work."
A subordinate, Stuart Harrison, notes life forms across the cosmos may be "eerily similar to us." We have logged this for the archive under Charming Local Assumptions, subfolder 12. The bipeds remain unaware that we have been reading their pond notes since the Carl Woese era and found the early drafts more honest.
Recommend continued observation of Enceladus. Recommend no contact. The subject is still working out that it has roommates.
Based on the original article "How a radical new view of life could reveal its origin – and aliens".
