Enceladus' plumes might not come from an underground ocean:
Saturn's icy moon Enceladus sprays water vapor into space. Scientists have thought that the plumes come from a deep subsurface ocean — but that might not be the case, new simulations suggest.
Instead, the water could come from pockets of watery mush in the moon's icy shell, scientists report December 15 at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting.
"Maybe we didn't get the straw all the way through the ice shell to the ocean. Maybe we're just getting this weird pocket," says planetary scientist Jacob Buffo of Dartmouth College.
The finding is "a cautionary tale," Buffo says. The hidden ocean makes Enceladus one of the best places to search for life in the solar system (SN: 4/8/20). Concepts for future missions to Enceladus rely on the idea that taking samples of the plumes would directly test the contents of the ocean, without needing to drill or melt through the ice. "That could be true," Buffo says. But the simulations suggest "you could be sampling this slushy region in the middle of the shell, and that might not be the same chemistry as is down in the ocean."
[...] "If those plumes aren't tapping into the ocean, it will really shift our perspective on what that plume is telling us about the interior of Enceladus,"[planetary scientist Emily] Martin [of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C] says. "And that's a big deal."
Journal Reference:
Colin Meyer, Jacob Buffo, Tara Tomlinson, et al. A mushy source for the geysers of Enceladus, (DOI: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/888686)
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Thursday January 06 2022, @05:56AM (1 child)
Get it, but it is snot? Decent planetary geology articles like this get no discussion, while Runaway's plot to turn the SoylentNews into a Gab outlet go viral? Ice-fishing on Europa, as Neil-de-Grasse-Tyson said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 06 2022, @09:23AM
Jesus Christ, even the summary needs a tl;dr. What the FUCK are they talking about??? In 1 word or less.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Thursday January 06 2022, @02:59PM (1 child)
In the event that you're looking for life on Enceladus, you're just as likely to find it in that plume as the "possible ocean". In the event that you're looking for exactly what the interior of Enceladus is made of and expecting that the plume to tell you what it's made up of. Sure, you may be off by a good bit. Then again, you're probably going to be off by a good bit, if all you're doing is measuring whatever mist you can catch anyway. You want to know what's there? Send a probe and a drill. Then again, you're going to get very tiny samples with that, too. Still, a whole lot more than taking pictures from really far away and scooping up some mist.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 06 2022, @04:43PM
Europa Clipper could have included a small lander to check a few inches at the surface at least, but it was designed for the pre-Starship era. Now we have to wait until the 2040s before we can try again.