Posted on 04/03/2014 4:05:11 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
For years, the motto among astrobiologists — people who look for life on distant worlds, and try to understand what life is, exactly — has been “follow the water.” You have to start the search somewhere, and scientists have started with liquid water because it’s the essential agent for all biochemistry on Earth.
Now they’ve followed the water to a small, icy moon orbiting Saturn. Scientists reported Thursday that Enceladus, a shiny world about 300 miles in diameter, has a subsurface “regional sea” with a rocky bottom.
This cryptic body of water is centered around the south pole and is upwards of 5 miles deep. It has a volume similar to that of Lake Superior, according to the new research, which was published in the journal Science.
The moon’s liquid reservoir had already been inferred from the presence of plumes of water vapor emerging from the south pole. The plumes stunned scientists when they were detected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2005. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Check the office of official records on enseladus Maybe that’s where his real birth certificate is?
If there’s life there, the Dems will be trying to make it an endangered species or register it to vote.
Has Barack Hussein Obama ever given any indication that he might be interested in space travel? The sort of challenge that travel to such a place presents might be the perfect capper for his legacy of stellar...acheivments...
When are they going to send ships to the Enceladus sea to look for the missing plane?
Butt, there is life on...
Tax it!
At 300 miles in diameter, the force of gravity there would be pretty weak - it might be possible to give something escape velocity just by throwing it ... like the birth certificate!
the beacon gets crushed by pressure at the bottom that is 5 miles deep
Where there's water there's gotta be fish!
Saturn has a community of sixty moons. Maybe he could organize them? Into a nice big beautiful statue of himself?
If he had it thrown off Enceladus, that birth certificate is well past Pluto by now. We may never discover it?
Because the gravitation on Enceladus is so weak, the pressure at a depth of 10 km would not be that great.
JennyCool. I haven’t heard from you since those hilarious jokes about the runaway bride.
Btw, that looks delicious.
That’s the spirit!
Set the hook!
I have to wonder though, what is keeping that body
of water liquid? if it’s under umpteen miles of ice
with a surface temp of minus two hundred degrees,
some source of heat has to be there and it’s got to
be pretty powerful.
Set the down riggers at 5 miles....aye captain!
.....then there's GOT to be jumbo perch down there just waitin' fer the Michigan ice fishermen......
Tiny rods with miles of line and the ice augers oh my!
Used to love that when I lived up north.
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