Icy Saturn Moon May Have Ocean Beneath Its Surface

Five years ago, scientists discovered that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, had geyserlike plumes spewing water vapor and ice particles.

 At least four distinct plumes of water ice spew out from the polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus. 

These plumes originate from a salt-water reservoir, according to a new study published online by the journal Nature.
“We discovered that the plume is stratified in a composition of ice,” said Frank Postberg , an astrophysicist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. “And the lower you go, the more salt-rich ice grains you find.”
Dr. Postberg and his collaborators analyzed samples of ice particles from the plumes gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
The analysis found that salt-rich particles make up more than 99 percent of the solids ejected in Enceladus’s plumes.

The researchers theorize that there are actually two reservoirs connected to the plumes. The first is a salt-water reservoir close to the moon’s surface that is directly feeding the plumes.
But feeding this reservoir, there is likely a larger, deeper salt-water reservoir, Dr. Postberg said.
“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” he said.

Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth moon, is icy and just over 300 miles wide. The presence of water makes it one of a few other places in the solar system where life could exist.
But even if this isn’t the case, it makes life outside of Earth seem more plausible, Dr. Postberg said.
“If there is water in such an unexpected place,” he said, “it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe”.

Source The New York Times