Saturn's Moons Harboring Water?

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."

Filling the lakes and seas?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"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"?

Kinda useless having it there...

[Penguinisto]

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

liquid water

[wizardforce]

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.

Re:hmm

[david.given]

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.

Re:It makes sense

[Corporate Troll]

Neither Saturn nor Jupiter are failed stars. Let Phil explain you this a bit better than I could [badastronomy.com]

Useless???

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Am I the only one who read the slashdot intro and thought, "I soooo want to go there!"?

Re:Lets invade!.. Saturn is just so cool!

[king-manic]

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 on earth so distasteful is due to it's disruption of the local ecology and to a lesser importance it damages the esthetic's of the area. However if there is no ecology then an argument about esthetic's alone seems rather empty.

looking for life? looking for water?

[Simonetta]

Looking for water? We got water here. Two thirds of the surface of this planet is covered with water, several miles deep in places. We got all the water that you'll ever need or want right here. For free.

Looking for life? We got life here. Lots of it. In fact there's so much life here that our main global industry is the creation of machines that are used to kill life here. Guns, munitions, bombs, atomic bombs, death planes, death satellites, endless first-person-shooter video games to prepare our young for killing. You want life? We've got plenty! Help yourself!

The point is that spending millions of dollars to look for life and water on other planets is insane. We already have plenty of it (it being whatever you're looking for) right here, right now.

What the people who are spending millions (hundreds of millions actually) of dollars on space travel are looking for is an easy paycheck that comes with a science-fiction fantasy attached. They should admit this to themselves and stop bullshitting the rest of us.

Then they should go become Hollywood screenwriters and contribute something useful to our society.

Am I pushing your buttons? Am I pissing you off?

Get real. ...and grow up.