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Saturn's Moons Harboring Water?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Oct 15, 2007 09:13 AM
from the where-else-is-aquaman-hiding dept.
Space NASA Science
eldavojohn writes "New bizarre images of Saturn's moons are exciting scientists as there may be some indication of water, possibly at very low depths in the frigid environment they possess. From the article, 'Titan's north pole is currently gripped by winter. And quite a winter it is, with temperatures dropping to -180C and a rain of methane and ethane drizzling down, filling the moon's lakes and seas. These liquids also carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon's surface. Finally, last week NASA and Esa revealed images from Cassini which confirmed that jets of fine, icy particles are spraying from Saturn's moon Enceladus and originate from a hot 'tiger stripe' fracture that straddles the moon's south polar region. The discovery raises the prospect of liquid water existing on Enceladus, and possibly life.' You can find the images here."
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Submission: Saturn's Moons Harboring Water? by eldavojohn (898314)
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  • Filling the lakes and seas? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:16AM (#20981871)
    "a rain of methane and ethane drizzling down, filling the moon's lakes and seas."

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Titan's lakes and seas are already methane or ethane. Maybe they mean "filling the moon's valleys"?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by db32 (862117)
      It is the same as how here on our much more boring earth, rain fills our lakes. If a pond or lake doesn't get any rain it will eventually evaporate away, it has to be refilled. I don't think it was meant in the sense of "its filling the lake with something other than what is already there" so much as "this is how these lakes were formed and are maintained".

      I remember as a child reading about this stuff and being fascinated. It has been a long time, but the descriptions I read stuck with me. I can't sa
    • The rain ends up in the lakes and seas hence filling them, just like the water version does on earth.

  • Kinda useless having it there... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Penguinisto (415985) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:25AM (#20981979) Journal
    Between the gravity well of each repsective Moon (and the big Saturnian one as well) and the hard radiation coming off of Saturn, you'll likely spend as much energy getting it out as it could provide.

    Now if they could score a lot of water off of asteroids and other ultra-low-gravity objects, we'd be golden, esp. the theories floating about concerning "dead comets", which IIRC are almost all water ice.

    That's where IMHO we need to be throwing exploration money; to get the low-hanging fruit first.

    /P

    • Am I the only one who read the slashdot intro and thought, "I soooo want to go there!"?
      • Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but, I believe the idea is to not have to lift H2O out of a deep gravity well, to provide water for humans off planet.
      • We don't need water HERE, we need it everywhere else. That includes as fuel for spaceships, as drinking water for spaceships, as drinking water for any space stations/habitats and so on.

        If it's in some place we have much better odds of setting up a colony there. However if it's harder to get it out of some place then it's of only marginal use save for some scientific colony.

  • liquid water (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wizardforce (1005805) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:28AM (#20982011) Journal
    The fact that some of Satrun's moons have water is nothing new, Tethys for example has a density very near 1 g/cm^3 indicating that it is likely mostly made of water ice. The real interesting thing here is that tidal heating could create pools of warmed liquid water neneat the surface.
  • With Saturn being like a somewhat failed star that one of its moons would resemble a sister planet to earth with water and everything. Now life is another matter, at least in a form that we know...
    • Er, are you joking? I'll assume you aren't...

      How is Saturn like a failed star? It has a solid core that makes up ~20% of it it's mass, that's no star. Even if it were somehow a failed star, that in no way implies that it'd have liquid water on any moons. The issue has nothing to do with formation, it's all about composition and heat: the moons of Saturn are made of ices (especially water) in a way that the terrestrial planets aren't *and* are too far from the Sun to support liquid water without some le
    • Neither Saturn nor Jupiter are failed stars. Let Phil explain you this a bit better than I could [badastronomy.com]

      • Re:It makes sense (Score:5, Informative)

        by MBGMorden (803437) on Monday October 15 2007, @11:25AM (#20983507)
        That explanation is, somewhat lacking. It explains very well why Jupiter is not a brown dwarf. "Failed star" isn't quite so specific.

        Basically, Jupiter is one extremely massive body. It's far more massive (more than twice as much) than all the other planets (even all the other gas giants, including similarly sized Saturn) combined. It's also made of MOSTLY hydrogen (prime element fueling a star), and interestingly enough, the center of mass between the Sun and Jupiter is actually OUTSIDE of the surface of the Sun. Not much outside of it admittedly, but no other planet in our system comes anywhere near it, and it's much like the Pluto/Charon system though not as exaggerated; the objects to some degree orbit each other rather than just one orbiting the other.

        So, we really need a good understanding on how binary star systems form. If they both coalesce from the same cloud, then Jupiter can indeed be seen as an "almost" star that had all the right components, and could have formed in a way similar to a binary system, but it simply didn't pickup enough mass during formation.
        • You find the following lacking?

          So: Jupiter is *not* a BD; it formed like a planet, in the disk around the Sun. It also has about 1/1000 the mass of the Sun, or about 1/80 of the mass it needs to fuse hydrogen.
          Plus the fact that Phil Plait is a real astronomer? I'd take his word over yours anyday...

          • Re:It makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)

            by MBGMorden (803437) on Monday October 15 2007, @12:15PM (#20984205)
            I said in my explanation that Jupiter is indeed not a Brown Dwarf, and that the linked text did explain that well. My point is that being excluded from the technical designation of brown dwarf does not exclude it from the less specific, and not as specifically defined designation of "failed star".

            I'd also question your term "real astronomer". I minored in astronomy in college and am still an avid amateur. Perhaps Galileo wasn't a "real astronomer" either since he never obtained a PhD in the discipline.

  • hmm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thatskinnyguy (1129515) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:33AM (#20982067)
    How could life, as we know it, exist in an atmosphere dominated by methane? Even if there was liquid water, how do we know that it is rich enough in oxygen to support life? I'm thinking that there is nothing to see here. Look somewhere else.

    • Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

      by david.given (6740) <dg.cowlark@com> on Monday October 15 2007, @09:45AM (#20982207) Homepage Journal

      How could life, as we know it, exist in an atmosphere dominated by methane?

      It wouldn't, of course. But there could be life as we don't know it. There's nothing magic about oxygen: it's merely a good oxidiser and we have lots of it. In some exotic environments on Earth, there's life that doesn't respire oxygen; and how did you think it got there, in the first place? Photosynthesising plants made it all. What do you think they breathed?

      Complex organic chemistry + lots of energy + a rich environment = ...well, we don't know, really. But it's bound to be interesting.

    • We have methane eating bacteria here [softpedia.com] already. There is a great deal of life as we know it that doesn't need oxygen. I think you are grossly oversimplifying and misunderstand what "life as we know it" really means. Just be cause us squishy hairless monkeys need large amounts of oxygen doesn't mean everything around us does too.
    • Ever heard of 'anaerobic respiration' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_respiration)?
    • How could life, as we know it, exist in an atmosphere dominated by methane?

      It's better for many kinds of life than an atmosphere filled with this horribly dangerous and aggressive oxygen stuff ...

    • Even if there was liquid water, how do we know that it is rich enough in oxygen to support life?

      Last, I checked plants don't need oxygen but CO2 and they are mostly interested in the Carbon and release the oxygen part as a by product.

      However, I wouldn't think photosynthesis would work too well out that far, but as biological history goes... Plants came first and then animals.

      • Last, I checked plants don't need oxygen but CO2 and they are mostly interested in the Carbon and release the oxygen part as a by product.

        Plants do breathe oxygen --- the photosynthesis happens as a separate process that happens in parallel. Admittedly, they don't use much of it (they don't get about much), but if you put them in a pure CO2 atmosphere, they'll die.

        Insert standard disclaimer about plants with weird freaky biochemistry here. There's always something that behaves oddly and breaks the rules

    • "enough in oxygen to support life" There was no oxygen in Earth's atmosphere when life formed. Oxygen was toxic to early life. Some of these early microbes are still around -- We called them "anaerobic". Oxygen still kills them. Only later as the oxygen level rose did life evolve a defence for oxygen then later a way to actually use oxygen

  • Pretty harsh (Score:5, Funny)

    by east coast (590680) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:37AM (#20982111)
    a rain of methane and ethane drizzling down, filling the moon's lakes and seas.

    I'm guessing this is a non-smoking moon?

  • Saturn's Moons Harboring Water?

    CmdrTaco's pun routine is up and running this morning I see...

    • Not a pun at all.
      A pun is a play on words, such that one word or phrase can have different meanings, or using a different word but similar in sound, for comic effect. eg. "Will this elastic do the job ? At a stretch".
      A harbor (or harbour) is a harbor is a harbor, in whatever context, and means the same thing through each.
      Google it [google.co.uk]
      Now if the headline was "Reports of Saturns moons harboring life don't hold water" then that's a pun.
      Man discovered dead, he was a cigarette addict - well there's your smoking gu

  • ESA (Score:3, Informative)

    by LuSiDe (755770) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:41AM (#20982159)
    ESA is an initialism standing for European Space Agency [wikipedia.org]. If you write NASA with capital letters (in proper English one should do this) you should do the same with ESA.

  • Ewww...? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:46AM (#20982221) Journal
    Methane rain drizzling down to form lakes and rivers?
    Is that the celestial equivalent of wet farts? :-(

    That must be proof of an Intelligent Evil Designer if any.

  • Enceladus, Tiger Stripes, and Jets (Score:4, Informative)

    by CheshireCatCO (185193) on Monday October 15 2007, @10:20AM (#20982613) Homepage
    You can find the whole press release about the correlation between the Tiger Stripes and jets of Enceladus here [ciclops.org].

  • Carolyn Porco gave a good TED Talk about this. (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvilNight (11001) on Monday October 15 2007, @10:27AM (#20982711)
    She discusses the Cassini mission in detail, including what we've learned about Titan and this strange behavior on Enceladus. It beats reading dead text.

    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/178 [ted.com]
  • I was intrigued about why the names of those tiger stripe cracks are middle eastern cities. Googling I found this article [planetary.org] which notes that there is a convention of naming features on this moon after places in the Arabian Nights. The page is cool and tells you what a sulcus is. And there's is a link on that page to a giant 6mb map [arizona.edu] with names of features on it.
    • Nonono, the Enceladusans!
    • They invited us over for a swim and a BBQ, you need to bring your own swimsuit though
      • Dude, a sea of methane? You can't bbq there, the moon would explode!

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          C'mon, their air has no oxygen. In fact, bottle of oxygen would be there what bottle of propane is here. It could make a bang, but wouldn't blow everything. With proper nozzle on it, you can light a match and cook just fine. However... you can't put the fire out with a splash from a lake! Their "water" "aids" "oxidation" of "fuel" (oxygen), unlike ours. Whooh, after writing all that with all that quotation marks, finally I see how Earth-biased our chemistry is. If we were from some other surroundings, we wo

      • Re:Saturnians (Score:4, Informative)

        by Red Flayer (890720) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:48AM (#20982243) Journal

        I for one welcome our new Saturnian overlords.
        Now that's just sad.

        If they were Jovian overlords, then we could celebrate.
        • You know, in the original 2001: A Space Oddessy, the monolith was at Jupiter. Sure, it was retconned in the movie (harder to film Saturnian rings) and in 2010 (where the move was instrumental to the plot*) and 2061 and 3001 (a terrible book, do not read). But it was Saturn to begin with.

          *Actually, you could ignite Saturn into a star too; it'd just be harder, and wouldn't last as long.

    • I know this is wildly offtopic, but Saturn is just simply soo cool! If you want to get ANYBODY hooked onto astronomy, just show them a picture of Saturn. I shudder to think of the day we will strip-mine Saturn (or equivalent heinousness), and will defile the planet with our greed. At least, we can hope.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by king-manic (409855)
        I know this is wildly offtopic, but Saturn is just simply soo cool! If you want to get ANYBODY hooked onto astronomy, just show them a picture of Saturn. I shudder to think of the day we will strip-mine Saturn (or equivalent heinousness), and will defile the planet with our greed. At least, we can hope.

        You do realize Saturn id a gas giant? You can't strip mine gas. But if we ever develope any technology to siphon materials from Saturn I don't understand your aversion to it. The reason we find strip mining o
        • Personally, I find aesthetics to be a perfectly valid reason to preserve the pristine nature of something, be it a natural area here on Earth or somewhere out in the stars. Whole theories of philosophy have been predicated solely on aesthetics. Simply because you're an uneducated boor who can't appreciate beauty for its own sake, doesn't mean that the rest of us should suffer to live in your cold, sterile world.

          That said, I don't necessarily think we could ever damage Saturn to the point of destroying its b

        • It's science fiction, I know, but...

          Take a gander at Charles Stross' Accelerando [accelerando.org] or Ken MacLeod's The Cassini Divison [fantasticfiction.co.uk] for ideas around "strip mining" the gas giants.

    • Re:I want it! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ihlosi (895663) on Monday October 15 2007, @09:57AM (#20982343)
      I really like the fact that there might be water out there in the solar system.

      Water is abundant in the universe. To get the stuff off a planet, you basically have to boil it off (using a combination of temperature (see Venus) and/or low pressure (see Moon, Mars)). Otherwise, if you have hydrogen (most common stuff in the universe) and oxygen (pretty common stuff in the universe), you're going to end up with water.

      Now, liquid water, that's another story.

      How can it be so abundant on Earth, and nowhere else?

      Earth is dry compared to objects that pretty much consist of water with some rock mixed in. Earth has a little bit of water sitting on the surface, and that's it.

    • plz to learn fundamental physics kthxbye

    • I would like to point people especially to the video at http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1702&js=1&navjs=1 [ciclops.org]. Now, watch the rotation of the planet, then re-start the movie and observe the lack of movement for the jets. You can see for yourself that the jets are rotating across the planet rather than with it, presumably along the rilles. The video is rather undeniable. ... People, you will perhaps get no better opportunity to see for yourself that space plasmas can be highly electrical.

      God, I must de

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by iamlucky13 (795185)

        I didn't view the movie, but from the description provided by our resident EU theorist, it seems to be something easily explained by Cartesian geometry and oft-encountered in orbital mechanics.

        As the radius of the plume increases, yet its speed remains the same, its angular velocity decreases, so it fall behinds objects below it moving the same speed along a concentric path. Thank goodness for this or we wouldn't have geosynchronous satellites as we know them and Copernicus might never have figured out he

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