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Saturn's Moons Harboring Water?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the where-else-is-aquaman-hiding dept.

eldavojohn writes "New bizarre images of Saturn's moons are exciting scientists as there may be some indication of water, possibly at very low depths in the frigid environment they possess. From the article, 'Titan's north pole is currently gripped by winter. And quite a winter it is, with temperatures dropping to -180C and a rain of methane and ethane drizzling down, filling the moon's lakes and seas. These liquids also carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon's surface. Finally, last week NASA and Esa revealed images from Cassini which confirmed that jets of fine, icy particles are spraying from Saturn's moon Enceladus and originate from a hot 'tiger stripe' fracture that straddles the moon's south polar region. The discovery raises the prospect of liquid water existing on Enceladus, and possibly life.' You can find the images here."

3 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Kinda useless having it there... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Between the gravity well of each repsective Moon (and the big Saturnian one as well) and the hard radiation coming off of Saturn, you'll likely spend as much energy getting it out as it could provide.

    Now if they could score a lot of water off of asteroids and other ultra-low-gravity objects, we'd be golden, esp. the theories floating about concerning "dead comets", which IIRC are almost all water ice.

    That's where IMHO we need to be throwing exploration money; to get the low-hanging fruit first.

    /P

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  2. liquid water by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The fact that some of Satrun's moons have water is nothing new, Tethys for example has a density very near 1 g/cm^3 indicating that it is likely mostly made of water ice. The real interesting thing here is that tidal heating could create pools of warmed liquid water neneat the surface.

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  3. Re:hmm by david.given · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How could life, as we know it, exist in an atmosphere dominated by methane?

    It wouldn't, of course. But there could be life as we don't know it. There's nothing magic about oxygen: it's merely a good oxidiser and we have lots of it. In some exotic environments on Earth, there's life that doesn't respire oxygen; and how did you think it got there, in the first place? Photosynthesising plants made it all. What do you think they breathed?

    Complex organic chemistry + lots of energy + a rich environment = ...well, we don't know, really. But it's bound to be interesting.