Ted Simons: Best selling science writer and physicist Lawrence Krauss joins us each month to break down the latest science news including intriguing information regarding one of the moons of Saturn. Here now is ASU physicist Lawrence Krauss.
Lawrence Krauss
Ted Simons: Best selling science writer and physicist Lawrence Krauss joins us each month to break down the latest science news including intriguing information regarding one of the moons of Saturn. Here now is ASU physicist Lawrence Krauss.
Lawrence Krauss: Nice to talk to you. Sounds like a climatologist.
Ted Simons: We are going to get to that.
Lawrence Krauss: OK.
Ted Simons: Let's talk about Enceladus, Saturn's sixth largest moon, but there's more.
Lawrence Krauss: There's more. It looks like a snowball. And we used to, in the old days thought it was just a rocky snowball. And it's really kind of interesting because but in fact what was discovered a while ago, probably by Cassini which is a satellite we sent to go around Saturn there are geysers coming out of it. There are geysers of water going shot out. The really interesting thing is that it's been realized that one of the outer rings of Saturn, you can see the geysers in that picture, one of the outer rings is actually mostly populated by material that's been shot out of Enceladus. They can learn about it from the outer ring of Saturn. It turns out the kind of dust that occurs depends on the temperature and solidity of the water that's carrying the dust. And so water of different temperatures will allow, the water will evaporate but the dust grains will be left over. Depends on the salinity and the temperature of the water that goes into it the dust grains will be larger or smaller. By looking at the dust grains in the rings of Mars, they have been able to probe the inside of the moon which is amazing and have found that, in fact, there's hydrothermal activity like there is in the earth. These geysers, it's hot water underneath that ice about 200 degrees in temperature from the size of the silica dust particles and the rings of Saturn. And the salinity and acidity, 4%, lower than our ocean, the pH level is not that different than our ocean and this is really interesting because it's very similar to the nature of the hydrothermal vents in our oceans in which we think the earliest forms of life formed.
Ted Simons: There could be little bacteria running around?
Lawrence Krauss: Who knows what there is running around. What's kind of interesting is that, this means that the conditions that are similar to the early formation of life exist underneath these deep oceans underneath this frozen surface. What's neat, you may say, why is it hot? You may ask me that.
Ted Simons: Why is it hot?
Lawrence Krauss: What a good question. The answer is it's not like the earth which has radioactivity and a molten core. It's being close to Jupiter. Its gravity and the tidal force that is stretched and it compress it as it goes around Jupiter literally just like if you pull a rubber band back and forth, it heats up the rubber band. That's what heats up the insides of Enceladus.
Ted Simons: But that’s different than the Earth, isn’t it?
Lawrence Krauss: We can't say whether the time frame, life evolves on earth over billions of years. And although actually relatively quickly within a few hundred million years, but how long has that hydrothermal activity been happening in its orbit around Jupiter? We can't say for certain. It's happening now and what's really kind of neat it's been pointed out, look, it has wonderful satellite as it is, like many satellites is based on 20 to 30-year-old technology. If we sent a new satellite out, looking for signs of organic materials, potentially life in these geysers we would be able to without going into it, we might be able to probe for biological activity, frozen dead microbes in those geysers.
Ted Simons: I think it's amazing you are basically talking about warm oceans underneath -- this is water on a moon.
Lawrence Krauss: So far away from the sun that it's just a spec away. It's really amazing. It's gravity heating up a moon. And Enceladus is not the only moon that is frozen on the surface that probably has oceans underneath it.
Ted Simons: Yeah.
Lawrence Krauss: Europa from Jupiter is another one. But it appears, we can actually, what's really neat by looking at the rings of Saturn we can learn what's inside. I find that amazing.
Ted Simons: No kidding. All right. Let's get back to Earth here and global warming. There's a report the rate could double in the next -- it's getting increasing? Exponentially?
Lawrence Krauss: This is a study in science. And there's another study we will probably talk about next month which is more interestin