Explanation:
Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus?
Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be
spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space,
creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole
and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring.
Evidence for this has come from the
robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting
Saturn.
Pictured above,
a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby.
The unusual surface features dubbed
tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue.
Why
Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon
Mimas,
approximately the same size, appears
quite dead.
Most recently, an
analysis of dust captured by
Cassini found evidence for sodium as expected in a deep salty ocean.
Conversely however, recent Earth-based observations of ice ejected by Enceladus into Saturn's E-Ring showed no
evidence of the expected
sodium.
Such research is particularly interesting since such an ocean would be a candidate to
contain life.
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