Posted on 11/04/2009 9:47:59 AM PST by Frenchtown Dan
Striking new photos of water-vapor geysers erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus were beamed to Earth this week by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the ringed planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
These are geysers of planetary dimensions! They make Old Faithful look like sweat off an ant.
Yes, huge.
What creates them is a big mystery.
I would think that unless the water is very hot and under a lot of pressure, it would freeze before ever getting to the surface. So, what’s creating the heat? Stress from Saturns gravity or other moons maybe?
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That is just fantastic. Wow!
...And where does the water come from in the first place? Ice I’m sure, but where does the ice come from? You have to have water, before ice can form.
Very interesting.
Where the water came from is a great question.
When the moon was warmer after it was formed, and maybe from bombardments of comets & asteroids. But because it’s only about 300 miles in diameter. I wouldn’t think there would be enough gravity to hold back evaporating water vapour.
So maybe it was never liquid on the surface, but the stress of Jupitor’s immense gravity and that from the other huge moons may be heating the moon under the ice causing liquid water.
I can only guess, based upon what I read, and it’s all speculation at this point.
Just have to wait for more explorations if zero doesn’t kill NASA, that is.
That would be a shame. I used to be very skeptical of NASA, but thinking ahead in the grand scheme of things, we really need to establish a significant presence off of our planet if we want to survive over the long term. Right now we are sitting ducks, with all of our eggs in one cosmic basket. Even if we could only colonize the Moon, that would certainly be better than nowhere. Right now, I think NASA is the best equipped at helping us get there, but the private sector should also be encouraged and given the freedom to help us get there as well.
Yes, there is waste in NASA, but when you think of all of the incredible, amazing exploration of space that has been done, most of the credit goes to them. There is no other organization like it. There should be more cooperation with the private sector, no doubt.
Colonizing the moon would be a logical start, I’m waiting for a picture of a chunk of ice, or some positive, conclusive proof that water ice does exist there in the shadows of the craters.
I think zero killed the funding for NASA’s planned exploration around 2020. Pity, when you think of how little it costs compared to most other government funded entities,
and we actually get somthing in return form NASA.
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