USA Today, Science News, ABC (both), etc: News once again – Enceladus’s spurts and tiger stripes may signal an interior ocean, complete with antifreeze
That little Saturnian moon Enceladus with the plume-spurting south pole just keeps popping into the news. In today’s Nature researchers using data from the Cassini spacecraft, including fly throughs (flys through?) of the frozen plumes of vapor rising from peculiar, polar “tiger stripes,” say they have an explanation how the frigid world might have a watery, liquid layer under its gelid crust. Which is: evidence that the plumes’ source contains significant ammonia and salts. They could make a pretty good antifreeze. This would ease the amount of tidal heating required to maintain a layer of melt inside. And where there’s melted watery stuff with organics, there could be a smidgen of possibility of life or something like it. And then NASA plugs the bejeezus out of the news.
We’ll get to how this is not entirely new, but first the outlets that pick up the latest include:
- USA Today – Dan Vergano (ScienceFair blog): Saturn’s mystery moon may have hidden ocean ; A brief, and focussed on ammonia.
- ABC Science (Australia) Sara Phillips: How Enceladus got its stripes ; She focusses on the Australian contribution to the study. She may have mixed up what antifreeze does, saying resuls “suggest chemistry plays an important role in raising temperature,” but the Tracker’s not sure. One suspects the chemistry is just lowering melting temperature. It might also be that chemistry makes liquid which changes the crust in a way that focuses tidal frictional heating near the pole. It could be clearer.
- ABC News (US) Ned Potter : Hidden Ocean in Saturn’s Moon? New Clues ; He includes an important element – that this is just the latest bit of research on a puzzle that has been bounced about for four years.
Less than a month ago, a similar bit of news arose on Enceladus and the elusive explanation for its unproven ocean – see Previous Post. That time, the news was the iffiness of evidence for salts in the spray.
Rubbing his hands in mirthless glee may be Science News‘s Ron Cowen, who this week buffed up and reposted a story he did last May on much the same info as in this week’s Nature. He does that every one in awhile. If you look at the previous post linked in the preceding graf, one sees he also was ahead of the pack on that one. One says “mirthless glee” for a reason – it is satisfying to get a scoop. But some of the edge goes off it when many other reporters, later, write it as though it’s new. What’s the good of a scoop of it doesn’t carry the day first time around? (Such scoops that don’t quite take are, one must add, a common experience in this business). The relatively light pick up to this week’s chapter in the saga of an internally damp Enceladus, one presumes, may reflect a feeling by many reporters and editors that they’ll just wait for somebody to drill an entry for a submarine into Enceladus to see what, or who, is in there.
Grist for the Mill:
Univ. of Arizona Press Release; NASA Press Release ;
-CP
