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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Saturnian moon may have deep-ocean vents that harbor life

• http://www.gizmag.com, By David Szondy

Take Saturn's moon Enceladus. For almost a decade, scientists have been puzzled by the gossamer plumes that waft up from its surface. Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft now indicates that these may might be due to present-day hydrothermal activity in the vast ocean beneath the crust of the frozen moon, raising the possibility that Enceladus may harbor life.

In 2005, the unmanned Cassini orbiter first saw signs of the wispy plumes flowing from the unusually warm south polar regions of Enceladus. The plumes, which consist of ice, water vapor, salts and organic chemicals, remained a mystery until 2014 when a gravitational study of Enceladus indicated that it had a 6-mi (10-km) deep ocean hiding beneath an ice crust 19 to 25 mi (30 to 40 km) thick. If it's warm enough for deep oceans to exist on Enceladus, the reasoning goes, then it may be active enough to generate the plumes.

The current view is that the plumes are due to hydrothermal activity. In other words, the core of Enceladus is hot – possibly due to tidal forces caused by Saturn's giant mass. Just as the heat inside the Earth can give rise to volcanoes and geysers, a similar mechanism may be to work on Enceladus.


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