Saturn’s Death Star-looking moon may have vast underground ocean
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/02/2024 (925 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have found the best evidence yet of a vast, young ocean beneath the icy exterior of Saturn’s Death Star lookalike mini moon.
The French-led team analyzed changes in Mimas’ orbit and rotation and reported Wednesday that a hidden ocean 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) beneath the frozen crust was more likely than an elongated rocky core. The scientists based their findings on observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which observed Saturn and its more than 140 moons for more than a decade before diving through the ringed planet’s atmosphere in 2017 and burning up.
Barely 250 miles (400 kilometers) in diameter, the heavily cratered moon lacks the fractures and geysers — typical signs of subsurface activity — of Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa.
“Mimas was probably the most unlikely place to look for a global ocean — and liquid water more generally,” co-author Valery Lainey of the Paris Observatory said in an email. “So that looks like a potential habitable world. But nobody knows how much time is needed for life to arise.”
Results were published in the journal Nature.
The ocean is believed to fill half of Mimas’ volume, according to Lainey. Yet it represents only 1.2% to 1.4% of Earth’s oceans given the moon’s petite size. Despite being so small, Mimas boasts the second largest impact crater of any moon in the solar system — the reason it’s compared to the fictional Death Star space station in “Star Wars.”
“The idea that relatively small, icy moons can harbor young oceans is inspiring,” SETI Institute’s Matija Cuk and Southwest Research Institute’s Alyssa Rose Rhoden wrote in an accompanying editorial. They were not part of the study.
Believed between 5 million and 15 million years old, too young to mark the moon’s surface, this subterranean ocean would have an overall temperature right around freezing, according to Lainey. But at the seafloor, he said the water temperature could be much warmer.
Co-author Nick Cooper of Queen Mary University of London said the existence of a “remarkably young” ocean of liquid water makes Mimas a prime candidate for studying the origin of life.
Discovered in 1789 by English astronomer William Herschel, Mimas is named after a giant in Greek mythology.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
