SATURN'S MOON ENCELADUS HAS HUGE OCEAN BENEATH FROZEN SURFACE



Enceladus illusstration NASA-JPL-Caltech

Just a few years ago, scientists discovered that one of Saturn’s moons was violently spewing something far, far into space.

 

That’s a pretty odd discovery on its own, but even stranger were the readings given off by the resulting plume of material: rather than being made of super-heated rock or steam, it was made almost entirely of frozen material.

 

Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, is sending out a 500-kilometre jet of solid granular hydrocarbons and, more importantly, crystals of water ice.

 

The engine behind this massive ejection is thought to be gravitational force exerted by Saturn itself, but that hypothesis relies on the assumption that Enceladus is hiding enormous reserves of liquid water just beneath its frozen surface.

 

This week, scientists from NASA confirmed that assumption, presenting evidence that Enceladus has a huge reservoir of liquid water beneath many  kilometres of ice.

 

The moon is actually quite small, just a few hundred kilometres across, so the surface area of the main ocean seems to be about that of Lake Superior. It is also up to 50 times as deep, however, making this alien ocean vast indeed.  

Enceladus cryovolcanoes erupting - NASA

 

The blue “tiger stripes,” as they are known, are fractures in the moon’s surface through which this water and ice can escape. The exact points of eruption are known as “cryovolcanoes.”

Read more
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/179834-saturns-moon-enceladus-has-a-huge-ocean-of-liquid-water-scientists-confirm

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RELATED

NASA VIRTUAL TOUR OF ENCELADUS
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/flash/Enceladus/enceladus.html

Cassini Saturn Mission
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/moons/enceladus/

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