Enceladus’ subsurface ocean tagged posts

Experiments bring Enceladus’ subsurface ocean into the lab

Experiments bring Enceladus' subsurface ocean into the lab
Plumes erupt from Enceladus’ southern polar regions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Through new experiments, researchers in Japan and Germany have recreated the chemical conditions found in the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Published in Icarus, the results show that these conditions can readily produce many of the organic compounds observed by the Cassini mission, strengthening evidence that the distant world could harbor the molecular building blocks of life.

Beneath its thick outer shell of ice, astronomers widely predict that Saturn’s sixth largest moon hosts an ocean of liquid water in its south polar region...

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