Frigid Future for Ocean in Saturn’s Moon

By Michael Schirber

Astrobiology Magazine

Posted: 19 June 2008, 06:45 am ET

The tide may be changing for the ocean suspected under the icy shell of Enceladus. Recent research has shown that this small moon of Saturn does not produce enough heat in its present configuration to keep water from freezing down to its core.

“There is no possible combination of parameters that allow for a thermally stable ocean,” said James Roberts of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Roberts and his colleague Francis Nimmo, also from UCSC, calculated the tidal heating expected inside Enceladus from the uneven tugging of nearby Saturn.

In all the models studied, the moon could not sustain an ocean for more than around 30 million years.

This could mean the ocean froze up long ago. Or perhaps more likely, Enceladus generated a greater amount of heat at some point during the past 30 million years by being in a more eccentric orbit than it is in now, the authors claim in a recent article for the journal Icarus.

Full article here:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080619-am-enceladus-ocean.html