An ocean lies a few kilometers beneath Enceladus's icy surface

[ScienceRocks]

An ocean lies a few kilometers beneath Enceladus's icy surface
June 22, 2016

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-ocean-lies-kilometers-beneath-enceladus.html#jCp

With eruptions of ice and water vapor, and an ocean covered by an ice shell, Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating in the Solar System, especially as interpretations of data provided by the Cassini spacecraft have been contradictory until now. An international team including researchers from the Laboratoire de Planétologie Géodynamique de Nantes (CNRS/Université de Nantes/Université d'Angers), Charles University in Prague, and the Royal Observatory of Belgium recently proposed a new model that reconciles different data sets and shows that the ice shell at Enceladus's south pole may be only a few kilometers thick. This suggests that there is a strong heat source in the interior of Enceladus, an additional factor supporting the possible emergence of life in its ocean. The study has just been published online on the website of Geophysical Research Letters.

Initial interpretations of data from Cassini flybys of Enceladus estimated that the thickness of its ice shell ranged from 30 to 40 km at the south pole to 60 km at the equator. These models were unable to settle the question of whether or not its ocean extended beneath the entire ice shell. However, the discovery in 2015 of an oscillation in Enceladus's rotation known as a libration, which is linked to tidal effects, suggests that it has a global ocean and a much thinner ice shell than predicted, with a mean thickness of around 20 km. Nonetheless, this thickness appeared to be inconsistent with other gravity and topography data.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-ocean-lies-kilometers-beneath-enceladus.html#jCp

Water seems to be extremely common and this ocean could be 45 km deep. The southern polar region appears to be only a few km thick.

 

[The Great Goose]

I knew that ages ago, numb nuts.

 

[Mac1958]

Looks like there may be a few moons in our solar system with liquid water in between the surface ice and hot core.

As exciting as it is to wonder about life in other solar systems and galaxies, we won't know about it in our lifetimes.

So going after knowledge in our own solar system by one day examining those moons is a pretty cool freakin' start.

 

[Votto]

And climate change is causing the ice to melt.

Curses!!

 

[SixFoot]

Along with Europa and Callisto. How many total does this make in our Solar System?