Saturn ’s moon Enceladus is a beautiful secret . Though it look like a solitary ice ball , this moon is concealing what ’s in all likelihood anunderground sea , engulfing a rocky nucleus . In fact , Enceladus ’s south pole stop active jet that pip out water vapor and frigid corpuscle from this ocean , which werefirst observedby NASA ’s Cassini orbiter in 2005 . These origin of these unbelievable K , along with well - defined fractures along the south terminal visit “ tiger stripes , ” is still being fence — but ateam of scientistsat the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have put forth an challenging explanation .
The squad , which is led by Johns Hopkins post doctorial researcher Kate Craft , posit that sometime in the last 100 million geezerhood , a monumental target nail into the tiny moon , perforate all the manner through to the sea . This heroic smashup would have causedmelting and fracturing .
When Enceladus did manage to refreeze , it left behind the hallmark Panthera tigris stripes — and tidal stresses acting on the Sun Myung Moon as it orbits Saturn keep those cicatrice unfastened , spewing heat and water vapor to this twenty-four hours . The researchers screen this idea by range a serial publication of computer simulations , which confirmed that a collision could have caused the tiger banding . The team presented theirfindingslast week at the48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conferencein The Woodlands , Texas .
“ The impact could have happen anywhere and then Enceladus would have rolled over until the impact point end up at whichever perch materialise to be nearest , ” conscientious objector - generator Francis Nimmo from the University of California Santa CruztoldNew Scientist . In other word , this hypothetical wallop would have removed enough cloth to induce a gravitative anomalousness — a part with less mass than its surround which , over time , would have gravitate toward one of the Moon ’s poles .
Enceladus is deserving strictly pursue for many reason . One is that it ’s fucking nerveless in every sense of the word — an frozen world that shoots weewee from its geyser ! Moreover , its underground sea make Enceladus a expectant nominee in the lookup for lifespan outside Earth , perhaps the respectable . Hopefully , our next trip to Saturn and its moons will be anall - out alien hunt , so we ’ll screw soon enough if we have any troupe there .
[ h / t New Scientist ]
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