Enceladus' jets reach all the way to its sea

Enceladus’ jets reach all the way to its sea
Saturn’s moon Enceladus sprays its salty sea out into space. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major

Thanks to the Cassini mission we've known about the jets of icy brine spraying from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus for about 8 years now, but this week it was revealed at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outside Houston, Texas that Enceladus' jets very likely reach all the way down to the sea—a salty subsurface sea of liquid water that's thought to lie beneath nearly 10 kilometers of ice.

' jets were first observed by the in 2005. The jets constantly spray fine particles of ice into space which enter orbit around Saturn, creating the hazy, diffuse E ring in which Enceladus resides.

Emanating from deep fissures nicknamed "tiger stripes" that gouge the 512-km (318-mile) -wide moon's the icy jets—and the stripes—have been repeatedly investigated by Cassini, which has discovered that not only do the ice particles contain salts and but also that the stripes are surprisingly warm, measuring at 180 Kelvin (minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit)—over twice as warm as most other regions of the moon.

Where the jets are getting their supply of has been a question scientists have puzzled over for years. Is friction caused by tidal stresses heating the insides of the stripes, which melts the ice and shoots it upwards? Or do the fissures actually extend all the way down through Enceladus' crust to a of liquid water, and through tidal pressure pull vapor and ice up to the surface?

Enceladus’ jets reach all the way to its sea
“Baghdad Sulcus,” one of many tiger stripe fissures on Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

Researchers are now confident that the latter is the case.

In a presentation at the titled "How the Jets, Heat and Tidal Stresses across the South Polar Terrain of Enceladus Are Related" (see the PDF here) Cassini scientists note that the amount of heating due to tidal stress seen along Enceladus' tiger stripes isn't nearly enough to cause the full spectrum of heating observed, and the "hot spots" that have been seen don't correlate with the type of heating caused by shear friction.

Enceladus’ jets reach all the way to its sea
Enceladus is actively spraying its habitable zone out into space. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI


With 98 individual jets observed so far on Enceladus' south polar terrain and surface heating corresponding to each one, this scenario, for lack of a better term… seems legit.

What this means is that not only does a moon of Saturn have a considerable subsurface ocean of liquid water with a heat source and Earthlike salinity (and also a bit of fizz) but also that it's spraying that ocean, that potentially habitable environment, out into local space where it can be studied relatively easily—making Enceladus a very intriguing target for future exploration.


Explore further

Cassini sees Saturn stressing out Enceladus

Source: Universe Today
Citation: Enceladus' jets reach all the way to its sea (2013, March 20) retrieved 25 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2013-03-enceladus-jets-sea.html

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User comments

Mar 20, 2013
All the evidence points to electrical discharge as the cause of the "jets".
