Saturn Moon Covered by ‘Global Ocean’ of Water
A “global” ocean of water, thought to be a key ingredient for life, sloshes around under the icy crust of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, according to NASA.
Scientists have long believed there might be water on Saturn’s sixth largest moon, but that it was likely in the form of a “lens-shaped body of water, or sea, underlying the moon's south polar region.”
Evidence of this has been spotted by the Cassini spacecraft in the form of geyser-like sprays of water vapor coming from the south pole area.
Using seven years of imagery collected by Cassini, scientists found the moon has a slight wobble as it moves around Saturn.
"If the surface and core were rigidly connected, the core would provide so much dead weight the wobble would be far smaller than we observe it to be," said Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini participating scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and a co-author of the paper. "This proves that there must be a global layer of liquid separating the surface from the core," he said in a statement.