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Science Could salty ocean lie below Saturn’s moon Enceladus?
Science Could salty ocean lie below Saturn’s moon Enceladus? | Could salty ocean lie below Saturn’s moon Enceladus? |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Thursday, 25 June 2009 | |
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Science DiscussionsThe June 24, 2009 media release from the NASA Jet Propulation Laboratory called Salt finding from NASA’s Cassini hints at ocean within Saturn moon, states, “For the first time, scientists working on NASA's Cassini mission have detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn's outermost ring. Detecting salty ice indicates that Saturn's moon Enceladus, which primarily replenishes the ring with material from discharging jets, could harbor a reservoir of liquid water -- perhaps an ocean -- beneath its surface.” The Cassini spacecraft, now on an extended Cassini Equinox Mission, flew by Enceladus twice in 2005. At that time, the spacecraft observed geysers of ice grains and vapor spewing from the southern pole region of Enceladus. Astronomers think that these geysers were supplying materials to the E ring of Saturn. Now, Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer has found salt within those ice grains. Scientists are now contemplating that liquid water may very likely be present beneath the surface of Enceladus. They make that conjecture because it is the only known way, they currently know about, that allows significant amounts of minerals to be dissolved above the surface of Enceladus, and still contain large levels of salt. Frank Postberg, who is a Cassini scientist located at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (Heidelberg, Germany) stated, "We believe that the salty minerals deep inside Enceladus washed out from rock at the bottom of a liquid layer." [NASA JPL] Dr. Postberg is the lead writer of an article that appears in the June 25, 2009 issue of the journal Nature. Page two continues. |
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