An ocean hides under the ice
Saturn’s small moon Enceladus vents salt water from a subsurface ocean, sampled in flight by Cassini.
Established2 min read
Cassini flew through the plumes at the south pole. The grains are salty. The gas includes water vapour, carbon dioxide, and molecular hydrogen. Salt and rock-water chemistry are what you get from an ocean touching a rocky core, not from surface frost.
Tidal flexing by Saturn keeps the water liquid. The ocean is global under the ice. Whether anything lives there is unknown. That liquid water exists there is not.
Caveats
- ‘Seawater’ means salty liquid water in contact with rock, not an Earth ocean with fish.
- Habitability is an open question. The ocean is not.
Sources
- 1Postberg F. et al.. Sodium Salts in E-ring Ice Grains from an Ocean below the Surface of Enceladus. Nature 459, 2009.