Ice worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune known as Trans - Neptunian Objects may have
liquid oceans beneath their icy surface, a NASA study suggested.
That's why moons such as Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, among others, may be able to maintain
liquid oceans beneath their...
Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have
a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell.
That includes Europa, which is thought to harbour
a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust.
Scientists thought that could be a sign of
a liquid ocean beneath its frozen shell, but couldn't be sure.
By the time the Voyager probes had flown through the Jovian system in 1979, scientists were fairly sure that Europa had an icy crust, and possibly
a liquid ocean beneath.
KAMUELA, Hawaii — With data collected from the mighty W. M. Keck Observatory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) astronomer Mike Brown — known as the Pluto killer for discovering a Kuiper - belt object that led to the demotion of Pluto from planetary status — and Kevin Hand from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have found the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast
liquid ocean beneath Europa's frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.
Not exact matches
More amazingly, we now know that
beneath the crust of Enceladus is a global
ocean of
liquid saltwater and organic molecules, all being heated by hydrothermal vents on the seafloor.
Beneath its frosty exterior, Titan also hides a deep,
liquid - water
ocean.
Although its surface is an airless landscape of cracked ice, all the evidence says that
beneath that bleak shell is a
liquid water
ocean stretching hundreds of kilometres down to the rocky mantle below.
Certain tidally stressed moons in the outer solar system, such as Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, harbor
oceans of
liquid water
beneath their icy crusts.
In the 1990s the Galileo space probe collected convincing evidence that Jupiter's large moon Europa has a global
ocean of
liquid water
beneath its frozen surface.
Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Triton, Pluto, Eris... they may all have, or have had, large
oceans of
liquid water trapped
beneath a frozen crust.
Titan is the only Solar System moon thought to have
liquid at its surface, although Lebreton says
oceans may lie
beneath crusts of ice on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and even on Saturn's small moon Enceladus.
Schimdt has found evidence that warm
ocean currents and convective forces
beneath Europa's frozen shell can cause large blocks of ice to overturn and melt, bringing vast pockets of water, sometimes holding as much
liquid as all of the Great Lakes combined, to within several kilometers of the moon's icy surface.
And so it was, when I reported on January 21 that fish were found living in an isolated corner of the
ocean beneath 740 meters of ice in Antarctica: People asked what this might mean for finding life on distant worlds such as Europa, a moon of Jupiter that very likely harbors an
ocean of
liquid water
beneath a crust of ice.
Beneath an ice layer about 10 to 15 miles (15 - 25 kilometers) thick, the moon is thought to harbor a
liquid water
ocean, possibly warmed by geologic processes originating in the planet's core.
If so, she suspects that the
liquid could eventually weaken the crust
beneath the Atlantic
Ocean near the continent's edge, causing it to break off from North America and sink back into the mantle.
And best of all,
beneath the ice shell resides an
ocean of
liquid water some 50 miles deep.
Martian colonies could pack up the spaceship and relocate to Jupiter's moon Europa, where scientists believe a large
ocean of
liquid water hides
beneath an icy crust.
The discovery of a vast lake of
liquid carbon dioxide
beneath the
ocean floor off Taiwan has startled earth scientists and raised hopes for a new strategy against carbon dioxide — related global warming.
The prime target of NASA's orbiter is Jupiter's moon Europa, which is thought to have an
ocean of
liquid water
beneath its icy shell.
A microbe found on Earth has been shown to survive happily in conditions known to exist on Enceladus, which has a
liquid water
ocean beneath its icy crust.
Enceladus hosts an
ocean of
liquid water
beneath its icy surface.
Mission scientists have determined that this stuff is coming from a huge
ocean of
liquid water
beneath the satellite's shell — and that this
ocean may be capable of supporting life as we know it.
Scientists announced Thursday that measurements from NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected hydrogen gas, a key energy source for microbial life, in a plume gushing from a vast
liquid water
ocean buried
beneath the icy shell of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Enceladus may be covered in an icy shell, but
beneath the surface lies a globe - spanning
liquid ocean about 37 miles (60 km) deep.
Europa has long been a high priority for exploration because it holds a salty
liquid water
ocean beneath its icy crust.
If the craft were to crash on the surface of a cold moon like Enceladus, the RTGs could easily thaw a path through tens of kilometers of ice, and plop down into the
liquid water
ocean beneath, though this might take a long time.
Many scientists believe Europa could be a good place to look for extraterrestrial life because it has an
ocean of
liquid water
beneath its icy surface.
Heat generated by the gravitational pull of moons formed from massive collisions could extend the lifetimes of
liquid water
oceans beneath the surface of large icy worlds in our outer solar system, according to new NASA research.
«We found that tidal heating can be a tipping point that may have preserved
oceans of
liquid water
beneath the surface of large TNOs like Pluto and Eris to the present day,» said Wade Henning of NASA Goddard and the University of Maryland, College Park, a co-author of the study.
Heat generated by the gravitational pull of moons formed from massive collisions could extend the lifetimes of
liquid water
oceans beneath the surface of large icy worlds in our outer solar system.
This is the same process of
liquid water in the
ocean, which when heated expands and becomes lighter and so rises and colder volumes of water around it will sink
beneath — in the
ocean this is called currents, movements of volumes of water through differential heating.