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Cassini Finds Evidence For Ocean Inside Titan
Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that by using data from the Cassini probe's radar, scientists established the locations of 50 unique landmarks on the surface of Saturn's planet-size moon Titan. They then searched for these same lakes, canyons and mountains in the data after subsequent Titan flybys. They found that the features had shifted from their expected positions by up to 30 kilometers. NASA says a systematic displacement of surface features would be difficult to explain unless the moon's icy crust was decoupled from its core by an internal ocean, making it easier for the crust to move. If confirmed, this discovery would add to the growing list of moons in the solar system that are icy on the outside and warm and liquid inside, providing potential habitats. We've previously discussed Titan's hydrocarbon lakes and potential cryovolcano."
"it sure would be interesting to send a probe in to it and see what we can discover."
We have sent The Huygens Probe Before, but it was not designed to look for an underwater ocean. Lets hope they return with somthing else.
Not to be rude, but actually this is incorrect. At low pressures there is some odd behavoir, but on a planetary scale the melting point of water increases with increasing pressure. Ice has several different crystal structures called polymorphs that change as pressure increases. Each requires greater and greater temperature to melt. This is a good page on the water molecule and its behavoir: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/index2.html.
I believe that a gas giant's intense gravitational field can heat the cores of nearby moons.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
The gravitational attraction between the moon and its parent planet is sufficiently strong that the modest changes in distance (and thus gravity) as the moon orbits are sufficient to repeatedly distort it by a 'significant' amount, which generates heat. It's kinda like a squash ball, which gets warm as it is repeatedly compressed during play.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Tidal forces are kneading these planets like bread. There's a pretty good about of mechanical forces getting turned into heat.
This is the same process that keeps one side of the Moon facing the Earth, and one side of Mercury facing the Sun. Both of them had some amount of spin long ago, but the squishing removes energy, and the only place that energy can come from is the rotational energy of the spin.
The strength of the effect depends on the relative sizes of the two bodies, and the radius of the orbit, which is why most of the bodies in the solar system aren't tide-locked.
rj
You might like to have a look at "Slow Life", by Michael Swanwick.
http://www.analogsf.com/Hugos/slowlife.shtml
It's a nice sci-fi novelette (that won the Hugo in 2003) about life in the deep seas of Titan.
http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/sf/Hugo2003.htm
http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Hugo2003.html#nvt
"Is there life on Titan? Probably not. It's cold down there! 94 Kelvin is the same as -179 Celsius, or -290 Fahrenheit. And yet . . . life is persistent. It's been found in Antarctic ice and in boiling water in submarine volcanic vents. Which is why we'll be paying particular attention to exploring the depths of the ethane-methane sea. If life is anywhere to be found, that's where we'll find it."