New signs of hidden sea on Saturn moon.
Scientists say Enceladus has telltale signature of sodium chloride.
By Irene Klotz
updated 2:53 p.m. ET, Thurs., April 30, 2009
New results from the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft show that the ice volcanoes on the moon Enceladus are probably rooted in a subsurface sea of liquid water, raising the prospect that life could exist there.
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Astronomers used ground-based telescopes to look for molecules of sodium, which should be present if rock had mingled with liquid water. They didn't find any, silencing proponents making a case for a subsurface sea on Enceladus.
That point is now moot. At a meeting of European geoscientists in Vienna last week, Frank Postberg with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and colleagues explained that the sodium is, in fact, there — it was simply bound in a form (sodium chloride) not detectable by Earth-bound telescopes.
"This is only possible if the plume source is liquid water that is or has been in contact with the rocky material of Enceladus' core," the scientists wrote in the EGU General Assembly's 2009 Geophysical Research Abstracts.
Added Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini imaging team, "Suffice it to say the prospects of a subsurface sea on Enceladus are excellent."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30501915/

Bob Clark