Saturn Moon's Geysers Explained

Beneath the smooth exterior, scientists suspect Enceladus is a tortured place, with a deep underground ocean that is constantly pushed and pulled by gravitational forces from Saturn and nearby sister moons. The motion causes the moon's huge ice sheets to grind together, producing fault lines on the surface which have been observed by the Cassini probe, according to Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist with the University of California in Santa Cruz and the lead author of a paper appearing in this week's issue of Nature... The heat generated by the tidal forces is so intense that Enceladus' deep-seated water could instantly transform from solid to gas, a process known as sublimation. Previously, researchers believed vapor plumes, photographed by Cassini as it flew by Enceladus, stemmed from a pool of liquid water sitting just beneath the surface... The new model does not require the presence of liquid water near the surface of Enceladus, said Robert Pappalardo, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It does, however, presume an underground ocean. As Nimmo explained, if the ice shell rested directly on the moon's rocky interior, tidal forces would not produce enough movement in the faults to generate heat. The new study suggest Enceladus' ocean is much, much deeper than previously believed and is buried beneath an ice sheet suspected to be at least three miles thick and more likely several times that depth.

Saturn Moon May Have Flipped in Space
by Irene Klotz
May 31, 2006
Discovery News
Millions of years ago, Saturn's moon Enceladus may have somersaulted in space, creating an ice-spewing hot spot on the moon's south pole, suggest scientists. For now, it is the only explanation why the small satellite sports a very active though isolated polar region. During flybys of Enceladus, the Saturn-orbiting Cassini probe has snapped pictures of gigantic icy plumes, indicating active geysers at the moon's south pole. Researchers who have been studying images and other data collected by the Cassini spacecraft believe a relatively warm blob of ice big enough to sheet New Jersey with a four-mile deep cover rose from beneath Enceladus' frozen surface. It could also have emerged from within its frigid and rocky core. Less dense than the surrounding terrain, the blob would be more susceptible to Saturn's powerful gravitational tug on Enceladus, a grip that at one time seems to have caused the moon to roll over, said Francis Nimmo... It may not have been a solitary incident either, Nimmo said in an interview with Discovery News... The maneuver may not be all that uncommon. Studies of magnetically charged particles around Earth show evidence that the planet's north pole may at one time have resided elsewhere, Nimmo added. Likewise, Uranus's moon Miranda shows evidence of multiple flips, he said... "It's astounding that Cassini found a region of current geological activity on an icy moon that we would expect to be frigidly cold, especially down at this moon's equivalent of Antarctica," added paper co-author Robert Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Tiny Enceladus [a moon of Saturn] May Hold Ingredients of Life
UANews.org (University of Arizona ) | 05 September 2005 | Lori Stiles
Posted on 09/08/2005 7:46:27 AM EDT by PatrickHenry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1480014/posts

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