Hot spot on Enceladus causes plumes

By Tony Fitzpatrick

Dec. 10, 2007 -- San Francisco — Enceladus, the tiny satellite of Saturn, is colder than ice, but data gathered by the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan has detected a hot spot that could mean there is life in the old moon after all. In fact, for researchers of the outer planets, Enceladus is so intellectually hot, it's smokin'.

The heat being generated on the moon's south pole at a hot spot is enough to eject plumes of ice and vapor above Enceladus. These plumes, according to William B. McKinnon, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, are this moon's most intriguing feature.

Hot sports on Saturn's tiny satellite, Enceladus, could be telltale signs of life on the frigid moon.

"The plume particles are like smoke, ice smoke," McKinnon said. "If you were standing on Enceladus' surface in daylight you wouldn't even be able to see the plumes. The particles are just larger than the wavelength of light, about one-thousandths of a millimeter. Most icy bodies of this size are geologically inert, but this is a clear indication of geological activity. Cassini has found active venting of water vapor. This leads to scientifically intriguing speculations and questions."

One is: Is this active ice volcanism on Enceladus? If so, is it due to ice sublimating, in the manner of a comet, or to a different mechanism, like boiling water, as in Old Faithful at Yellowstone?

The biggest question: If there is water on Enceladus, is there life?

Full story here:

http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/10731.html