Global Ocean Covers Enceladus

Throughout history, humans have been striving to find otherworldly life outside of Earth. Excitingly, according to an article from NASA, evidence from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft prove that the buried ocean of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, could be a great place to search for extraterrestrial life. Since a decade ago, geysers spurting near its southern pole have been proof for scientists’ suspicions that Enceladus has a smaller sea. However, after Cassini passing Enceladus over twenty times and its several close passes over the south polar region, the collected gravity data is evidence that there is an underground ocean that covers the whole globe. Researchers have analyzed more than seven years' worth of images of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft and noticed that the moon slightly wobbles as it orbits around Saturn; the icy crust is not frozen to its interior, therefore a global ocean must exist(See Figure 1).

This finding has a huge impact on the science field, for now that humans have one more key to finding life outside of Earth, we can search further about the possibility of extraterrestrial life existing out there. It is exciting to hear that already, “deep-dive discoveries we can make with long-lived orbiter missions to other planets” are being considered and planned, according to Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute.

In addition, this could be a potential solution to Earth becoming untenable due to global warming or the continuously growing world population, since once scientists find otherworldly inhabitants on Enceladus, there may also be a chance of humans being able to live on it, along with Mars.

The idea of a global ocean on one of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, might not seem like a great deal, but it surely does open the door to many crucial things such as further research of extraterrestrial life and a new destination for human beings.

Figure 1. Illustration of the interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus showing a global liquid water ocean between its rocky core and icy crust. Thickness of layers shown here is not to scale. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Citations:

Witze, Alexandra. "Year in Review: Global Ocean Spans Enceladus." Science News. N.p., 15 Dec. 2015. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.

Dyches, Preston. "Cassini Finds Global Ocean in Saturn's Moon Enceladus." NASA/JPL. N.p., 15 Sept. 2015. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.