Sentences with phrase «only icy moon»

Nevertheless, he notes: «If the plumes are real, this shows that Enceladus isn't the only icy moon where this happens.

Not exact matches

This heating ought to be weak, but some unknown process seems to be amplifying it, possibly enough to melt a deep ocean of liquid water on Enceladus, or maybe only enough to form smaller pools of water within the moon's icy shell.

But only recently have measurements confirmed that, beneath the moon's icy shell, an underground ocean spans the entire globe (SN: 10/17/15, p. 8).

The earlier evidence for water on the moon hinted only at small deposits near the poles, probably left there by the impact of icy meteorites.

It envisions the great reshuffling as a brief, violent affair that not only put the outer planets where they are today but also created the Kuiper belt of small icy bodies beyond Neptune, gave the planets scores of oddly orbiting moons, and bombarded the solar system with a rain of asteroids and comets so fierce that it would have cooked all but the deepest subterranean life on early Earth.

We could have spotted the majestic icy plumes of Saturn's moon Enceladus 25 years earlier than we did, if only we'd known to look.

WE COULD have spotted the icy plumes of Saturn's frozen moon Enceladus 25 years earlier than we did, if only we had known to look.

Silica found in the jets can be produced only in water close to boiling point, indicating that hydrothermal vents are also present in the subsurface ocean — making the icy moon a hot target in the search for life.

Europa (which is 12 percent smaller than Earth's Moon) appears to have a sparsely cratered shell of water ice that may be only 30 to 50 million years old, and so some resurfacing process must be renewing its icy shell.

This paper can't say whether any microbes do or ever did exist beneath the moon's icy crust, Waite was quick to add — only that the right ingredients are there.