Cassini spacecraft finds evidence for liquid water on Enceladus


In a recent article in Christian Science Monitor, titled "Cassini spacecraft finds evidence for liquid water on Enceladus", writer Pete Spotts looks at new research supporting the possibility of finding life beyond Earth on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Two years ago, Mikhail Zolotov, a planetary geochemist in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, used geochemical models to explore the question of how an ocean chemistry on Enceladus would change over time. According Zolotov, an early ocean would have been salty, though far less so than Earth's oceans, but he found that the main salts would be sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate (table salt and baking soda).

Enceladus shepherds Saturn's outermost ring, the E ring, which it formed and renews by spewing ice grains into space via the plumes venting from its South Pole region. In some of the E ring's grains, researchers recently detected the chemical equivalent of table salt and baking soda.

"It's a major discovery," says Zolotov of the research which was published in the June 25 issue of Nature.

The only way those compounds could form, researchers say, is through the interaction of liquid water and rock. And the only spot in the neighborhood where those kinds of reactions could take place is Enceladus, with its rocky core, and at least early in its history, an ocean beneath its icy crust.

The likelihood of an ocean existing beneath Enceladus' icy surface today is slim.

"Currently, we do not have enough energy sources to maintain a large ocean," he says. But there is enough energy to maintain a layer of slushy brine deep beneath the moon's surface, perhaps as a thick layer between ice and rock, he adds. That brine would have formed as an ocean froze, driving the salts toward the bottom.

Article source: Christian Science Monitor

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