The water of Enceladus

Enceladus is a very interesting moon for us, because it has a large mass of liquid water under an icy crust and also the most interesting thing is that that icy crust is quite thin, which allows us to investigate Enceladus and what is in that surface ocean in more detail. It has been determined that it is quite thin because we have indications that there are many other icy moons that have masses of water under the surface.

In the Saturn system, for example, Rhea, it is possible that it has it and it may have much more water than Enceladus, but it has a much thicker icy crust and that complicates any research work on what is beneath it. However, Enceladus is a bargain for planetary scientists because it is like a ball of ice cream that is melting, especially at the south pole, there its icy crust may be only a few kilometers thick and the presence of geysers is confirmed.

Jets that launch space, water and the material under the ice, although the water comes out in the form of vapor and automatically transforms into ice, a part ends up snowing on Enceladus and another part ends up forming part of Saturn's ring. It is estimated that on Enceladus, despite its small size, there is an ocean of about 20 million cubic kilometers of liquid water.

If you could pour that water on Mars, you would have an ocean a little larger than the Arctic Ocean here on Earth or it would create about 5.4 seas like the Mediterranean Sea.

It is believed that what heats the water under the icy crust of Enceladus is a combination of factors, the main one being tidal forces, that is, the effect of Saturn's gravity on Enceladus, since Enceladus does not orbit Saturn in a perfect circle, but in a slightly elliptical orbit, as Enceladus approaches and moves away from Saturn in its orbit, the force of gravity of the gas giant on Enceladus varies and that variation in the gravitational force causes the core of Enceladus stretches and contracts, repeatedly over and over again, causing heat.

There are more factors such as orbital resonances with other moons and the rocky core of Enceladus is believed to be porous, which is quite logical. It is a small moon, it does not have enough gravity to compact all the rock and materials inside, this means that the water, having a porous rock core, the water filters through the gaps in the rock and goes towards the center where there is more heat and that heat is transmitted more directly to the ocean thanks to that superheated water.

All of this perhaps explains why the south pole appears to be seething with hydrothermal activity, as well as shackles and jets of steam. While Enceladus's north pole is more solid and compact, it is possible that the rocks at the south pole are more porous than those at the north.

And under all that water dynamics, life may have emerged on that moon, they don't believe.

The images without reference were created with AI

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