Cassini Finds Evidence of Water

CheshireCatCO writes "Scientists working on the Cassini Mission think that they have found compelling evidence for the existence of liquid water at the south pole of the moon Enceladus. In addition to the obvious puzzles relating to how temperatures can be held high enough for liquid water, the presence of water, as well as the detection of organic molecules, opens up the possibility for life at Enceladus's south polar region. The findings are to appear in the 10 March issue of the journal, Science"

Saturn

[Illbay]

It should be noted that Enceladus is a moon of the planet Saturn.

Yeah, I know a *true geek* such as typically is found on /. will know this without looking it up, but for those afraid to ask...

Re:H2O?

[Cybrex]

It's H2O. They've been able to specifically identify the Hydrogen and Oxygen, and the ratio is correct.

Re:Saturn

[conJunk]

Yeah, I know a *true geek* such as typically is found on /. will know this without looking it up, but for those afraid to ask...

Well, we didn't even need to get the name of the mood, we *all* know where the Casini probe is and what it's doing...

Re:slashdotted already?

[CheshireCatCO]

Well, ciclops.org is feeling the load quite badly at the moment. We're still on a single T1 and we're serving up a lot of very large images at the moment. Apologies if the site is slow or unresponsive. (And we're working on getting another line, but... bureaucracy is happening.)

Re:Saturn

[meringuoid]

It should be noted that Enceladus is a moon of the planet Saturn. Yeah, I know a *true geek* such as typically is found on /. will know this without looking it up, but for those afraid to ask...

A true geek might not be expected to know all the moons of the Solar System - I confess I would have had only a 50% chance of getting Enceladus right - but he would certainly be expected to know that the Cassini spacecraft is in orbit around Saturn. Has been for about five years, IIRC. Thus we are unlikely to hear reports of major discoveries made by Cassini about moons of Jupiter, or perhaps of Neptune.

Re:H2O?

[Jon Luckey]

How can a spectrometer work without combustion?

You can read spectrums as patterns of light absorbtion bands as well as light emission bands

Re:Arthur C Clarke says ...

[Etcetera]

Ironically enough, the original 2001: A Space Odyssey story (it remains this way in the novel) has them visiting Saturn, NOT Jupiter. Supposedly it was changed in the movie because the effects people ended up not being able to make a convincing Saturn. IIRC the Monolith is on the moon Iapetus [wikipedia.org] -- a black dot visited smack in the middle of the extraordinarily high contrast between its faces.

Clarke's 2010(+) novels follow the cinematic version and keep them visiting Jupiter.

Further Link

[CheshireCatCO]

The editors changed my story link. My original submission had http://www.ciclops.org/ [ciclops.org] which has not only the press-release but several supporting images which might be of interested. Granted, our server is feeling the load pretty badly at the moment, but that'll probably ease up in a little while.

Re:Really dumb question...

[biraneto2]

The current theory is found in this link [nasa.gov]

Re:Saturn

[Wyatt Earp]

Cassini was launched in 1997 and entered Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004. On December 25, 2004 the probe separated from the orbiter and probe reached Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens [wikipedia.org]

Re:Same old news with a new press release and a (!

[CheshireCatCO]

Speaking as someone who worked this: no we didn't. We knew that there was a plume earlier but as far as we knew it was warm ice that produced it. And that wasn't a year ago that we announced the discovery of the plume, either.

The new measurements suggest that there too much water vapor in the plume to be warm ice and it almost has to be liquid water.

Also, there is no detection of ammonia so far.

We're still talking very cold temperatures

[PIPBoy3000]

If you look at a temperature map [solarviews.com] of Enceladus, it's still quite cold, perhaps 100 degrees Kelvin. With virtually no pressure, it's enough to cause evaporation and the formation of water. There's a good write-up here [solarviews.com].

So, don't expect to see exotic creatures swimming about. It might end up being a great place to mine for water, however, supporting future colonies of Saturn. The moon has virtually no gravity, so you could practically throw it off the surface (well, not really - the escape velocity is 212 m/s).

Re:slashdotted already?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/060309_cassini_w ater.html [space.com] has a article on it

Re:Neptune

[CheshireCatCO]

That sounds like Triton, although I don't think we have any direct detections of a nitrogen ocean. There are certainly plumes erupting from the surface, though, so it's definiately possible.