Salt-water geyser plumes erupt from Enceladus. We like.
Image credit: NASA
NASA’s Cassini probe to Saturn has turned up the best evidence yet that there’s a seriously vast ocean of salt water sloshing around beneath the icy shell girdling the little Saturnian moon Enceladus. The water comes from fissure’s in the moon’s surface called “tiger stripes,” which are spritzing out columns of briny liquid in huge geyers. Cassini flew close enough to Enceladus to snare samples of the salty liquid, in the form of ice grains, in its cosmic dust analyzer. The news-value here is that the amounts of potassium and sodium in the ice grains mean the chemical make-up of the moon’s likely under-ice ocean is somewhat similar to Earth’s oceans, which means the possibility for finding living things there has just increased significantly.
This is especially intriguing stuff to me, since one of the alien creatures that my exoveterinarian Zenn Scarlett deals with in my first book is an Enceladan ice sylph.
Now, what needs to happen next is a new NASA probe to Saturn that can drop a landing vehicle onto the surface of Enceladus, turn on its its heating element to melt thru the ice and launch its little submarine-bot unit to go snap a pic of a slyph that I can use on Zenn’s book jacket. I’ll be waiting….