Enceladus is let a moment : ever since NASAannouncedit had all the basic ingredients to back life history , hoi polloi have become interested in the strange Saturnian moon . In gain to hiding a tender ulterior ocean beneath its crust , Enceladus produces enough energy from its hydrothermal vent that could hypothetically stomach foreign bug . To add another layer of bizarreness to this foreign worldly concern , new inquiry suggests Enceladus may have tipped over long ago .
After study information collected byNASA ’s Cassini space vehicle , a team of scientists call up they ’ve recover evidence thatEnceladus ’ whirl bloc — the fanciful line through its north and south poles — has shifted about 55 degrees away from its original axis . According to the research worker , the most likely reasonableness is that a smaller object , like an asteroid , collided with the moonlight , causing it to reorientate . A smash - up has previously been used to explainEnceladus ’ unusual “ tiger stripes,”geysers of water erupting at the moonlight ’s current south pole . The team ’s research was issue in April in the journal Icarus .
“ The geological activity in this [ tiger stripe ] terrain is improbable to have been initiated by interior processes , ” the study ’s lead author , Radwan Tajeddine , a Cassini imagery team companion at Cornell University , said in astatement . “ We think that , for drive such a large change of direction of the Sun Myung Moon , it ’s possible that an impact was behind the formation of this anomalous terrain . ”
If Enceladus was indeed walloped by a giant space rock long ago , it would have redistributed the synodic month ’s mass . agree to NASA , it would have take on Enceladus over a million years to get its shit together and stabilise — in the meantime , its northward and south poles would have shifted greatly in aphenomenoncalled “ true polar wander . ” Polar wander , whichhas also been used to explainthe odd equatorial placement of Pluto ’s famous warmness part , could explicate why Enceladus ’ Union and south pole lookso unbelievably differentfrom one another . For one thing , the north magnetic pole does n’t have those hydrothermal vent spewing water vaporisation .
While Enceladus is still shrouded in icy mysteries , hopefully , cracking a few will help us fancy out what this earth is hiding . Maybe , just maybe , we ’ll get to obtain some space narwhals lurking below its surface .
[ NASA ]
AstronomySaturnScienceSpace
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