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Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has Global Subsurface Ocean
An anonymous reader writes: NASA's Cassini probe has made another fascinating discovery: Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, has an underground ocean spanning its entire globe. Researchers were trying to explain why the moon wobbles as it orbits Saturn, and they eventually came to the conclusion that its outer shell must be completely detached from its core. "The mechanisms that might have prevented Enceladus' ocean from freezing remain a mystery. Thomas and his colleagues suggest a few ideas for future study that might help resolve the question, including the surprising possibility that tidal forces due to Saturn's gravity could be generating much more heat within Enceladus than previously thought."
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It's NOT obvious because it's very gradual and there are multiple potential places the energy can be transferred from, such as Saturn's spin rate, the moon's orbital momentum, the moon's (past) rotation, the rings, and/or nearby moons. Resonance based energy transfer can be quite unintuitive.
Table-ized A.I.