comic | episodes & e-books | store | about
< previous post | next post > | all news from Sep. 2015 News archive | News search | RSS
 
  Enceladus wobble reveals global oceanSep 16, 2015 11:07 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:According to a new BBC article, seven years of studying the Cassini probe's photos of Saturn's moon Enceladus—like these, maybe
 
Image
(source)
 
Image
(source)
 
Image
(source)
 
(Images by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. That last one includes Saturn's largest moon, Titan, looming in the background.)
 
—has told astronomers that the slight wobble they can see in the moon, small though it may be, can only be possible if the moon's core is not connected to its icy crust—that is, if a global ocean under the crust completely separates the surface from the moon's solid center: "If the surface and core were rigidly connected, the core would provide so much dead weight that the wobble would be far smaller than we observe it to be."
 
It has been evident that liquid water exists on Enceladus for a while—at least since Cassini spotted geysers shooting into space from one of the moon's poles—but there was a debate on just how much liquid water there was—possibly it was just a sea beneath the pole. That theory no longer appears to hold enough water!
 
 
 
 
·····
 
 
 
 
 
< previous post | next post > | all news from Sep. 2015 News archive | News search | RSS
 
© Copyright 2024 Ben Chamberlain. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy