Wednesday 9 April 2014

Saturn's Moon Enceladus Shows Signs of Youth

Water-ice blasting from Enceladus. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI.



Joel Kontinen

Jets of water-ice seem to be blasting from Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus. This has created buzz in the extraterrestrial life community with hopes of finding at least microbial life on the moon that is only 500 kilometres (just over 300 miles) wide.

Data recently obtained by NASA's Cassini probe suggest that a large lake the size of Lake Superior might lurk on Enceladus.

What the life-searchers have not thought about critically is the signs of youth and the existence of so much water on a moon that they believe is 4.5 billion years old.

A moon that old should probably be very dead. But obviously, it isn’t.

Like many other moons, for instance Jupiter’s moons Europa and Io and Saturn’s moon Titan, Enceladus shows signs of youth, just what we would expect from the model based on Genesis.

Moons are not the only objects in our solar system that display signs of youth. There is ice on Mercury, which is - or at least should be - a big dilemma for long-agers.

Source:

Amos, Jonathan. 2014. Saturn's Enceladus moon hides 'great lake' of water. BBC news (3 April).