Surfs Up! Ocean Evidence On One Of Saturn's Moon

[DekuTrash]

Long Title


http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/play...26722&src=news

[Alkarin]

this is a wonderful find

[nopasties]

good find

[Ulyaoth]

Haven't we known this for a while or is this a new moon that has an ocean?

[Alkarin]

we have only hypothesized it had water until now.

[Ulyaoth]

I thought they've observed the geysers and splits in the glaciers for years?

[Baron von Sky Hat]

"E.T. don't surf..."

It has been known for some time that the plumes were there (I think I've seen papers on it going back to 2006), with initial analysis of data from Cassini which initially did flybys in 2005. The salts and composition of the plumes is slightly more recent, but there are still papers on the topic going back to at least 2008 rather than this year. This likely corresponds to the more recent March 2008 flyby (I haven't read all the papers in detail).
So there's been lots of contributions and continued analysis along the way, narrowing in on parameters and uncertainties, as is the natural process for any science. We'll continue to find out new stuff from Cassini data for a good while yet. The salts specifically are more telling of sub-surface oceans rather than the prior data, for which is was less certain.

It's a fascinating place though, I very much hope that there's a follow up mission planned to focus on Enceladus (There've certainly been proposals of concepts). It seems to be very much one of the most likely places to find life, which would be rather momentous.

A few good papers that I have read are:
A very nice overview of Cassini results and other studies as a whole (was submitted a little while back though, so doesn't contain up-to-the-minute research, as it were)
http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0906.4064

A good overview of the concepts behind the search for extra-terrestrial life, some potential criteria for it to have developed, and some of the current candidates for planets/moons that might have life (Primarily Mars, Enceladus and Europa). This one is rather older, and mentions some discussion on whether sub-surface oceans exist on Enceladus, which has since been developed with data from the 2008 flyby so may not all be relevant given this new data and analysis.
http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0712.2850

I can find some more, but the problem is that most of the others I've found through things like http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/ and I'm not sure whether they'll all be publicly accessible.