Technocrat

Water on Enceladus

zogger
Thu Nov 27 09:29:00 -0800 2008
Astronomy.
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Enceladus is a moon of Saturn and has a unique feature where huge plumes or jets of dust and water vapor have been detected. There is some additional evidence coming from the Cassini probe now that indicates this might be liquid water as opposed to ice particles. If it is liquid, the chances for life as we know it being present there have gone up considerably.

Hansen said the new Cassini observations, however, do support a mathematical model developed in 2007, which treats the vents as nozzles that channel water vapor from a warm, probably liquid source, to the surface at supersonic speeds. ed.z.: maybe there is life there, but if the water is being pumped out into space at supersonic speeds, it won't be there for long!

Water on Enceladus
duhavid
Thu Nov 27 21:49:00 -0800 2008
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"maybe there is life there, but if the water is being pumped out into space at supersonic speeds, it won't be there for long!"

Unless that is just the life there urinating....

Water on Enceladus
President4242
Mon Dec 01 08:46:12 -0800 2008
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Or, given a different potential interpretation of the data, I doubt any life that exists isn't warm-water based; that is, highly unlikely to develop intelligence or science.

Might be a few microbes or algae or something of the single-celled sort, but nothing more than that.

Think "volcanic jets in the ocean", not "land-based mammals".

 

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