Scientists discovered that Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, has geyser curtains that spew as 200 kilos per second from its "tiger stripes."
The fragmented, tormented surface on such a tiny planetary body startled researchers.
Researchers published the work, "Cooling Crusts Create Concomitant Cryovolcanic Cracks," in Geophysical Research Letters.
IN SPACE - AUGUST 18: In this handout image provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), looking toward the sunlit side of the rings, Saturn's rings and the icy moon Enceladus are seen in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 18, 2015. Saturn's night side (top C), is illuminated by sunlight reflected off the rings. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 87,000 miles from Enceladus. Between April and September 2017, Cassini will plunge repeatedly through the gap that separates the planet from the rings. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency.
Saturn Moon Enceladus Spills Water In Space
Enceladus, Saturn's sixth moon, is the size of the United Kingdom and is covered in kilometers of ice.
A liquid ocean lies under the surface, which breaks through a series of fissures at the southern pole, blasting a continual geyser into space.
That geyser includes signs of submarine vents, seawater, and even methane, indicating that life may exist in the pitch-black waters.
Maxwell Rudolph, a geophysicist at the University of California, Davis, said in a PopSci report that the moon is unique in the solar system because of its "tiger stripes" and the geyser that erupted through the lunar surface.
Enceladus' ice crust cracks under strain as it heats and cools in orbit, enabling water to pour towards the surface.
The strain puts stress on the frozen moon, causing it to crack. As a result, channels for the high-pressure liquid to reach the surface were established.
How Cryovolcanism Played Role
Instead of intentional cryovolcanism, Rudolph and his colleagues proposed per Universe Today that the leaky water spontaneously boils when it encounters the vacuum of space.
Cryovolcanism is a relatively recent phenomenon that Voyager probes' first detected during its journeys to the furthest reaches of the Solar System.
The said phenomenon usually spews forth water, ice, and other elements in conditions hundreds of degrees below freezing rather than hot, molten lava-like volcanoes on Earth.
For example, temperatures on Enceladus' surface seldom exceed -200°C (-330 F).
Cryovolcanoes have been discovered on Jupiter's moons Io and Europa, and Enceladus and other icy moons. Other moons erupt with water, methane, and ammonia, while Io looks to be outgassing sulfur dioxide.
ALSO READ: Jupiter's Moon Europa 'Provides' Oxygen To Its Ocean; Is The Lunar Surface Habitable?
Why The Moon Spilled Water
Rudolph and colleagues said the orbital and internal history of the ice-covered ocean planets Enceladus and Europa were modeled over 100 million years.
Because of the eccentricity of the moons' orbits, the thickness of their ice shells varies.
Thermal tensions in the ice shell and pressure in the underlying ocean will alter as the ice builds and thins, the scientists claimed, encouraging the shattering of the ice shell and generating the tiger stripe fractures.
This phenomenon usually happens as the ice cools and thickens. Because ice has a larger volume than water, the pressure imposed on the ocean below would cause tension on the ice.
The strain and stress might produce fissures, allowing liquids to reach the surface from up to 20 kilometers distant.
The sublimation of water when it enters the vacuum of space creates the illusion of "jets" where none exist.
In a news statement, Rudolph stated that this is compatible with the look of Enceladus' surface, which does not exhibit any signs of cryo-lava flows pouring from the surface fractures, as seen on Io.
The tiger stripe fissures on Enceladus appear unique in our Solar System, as they have never been seen before.
They are around 130 kilometers long and 35 kilometers apart. They look to be erupting with water ice regularly.
But, according to Rudolph, the mechanism revealed in this new research of ocean pressure and the spontaneous eruption is insufficient to explain the cryovolcanism that may be occurring on Europa.
Because their models don't indicate fissures reaching the moon's deep ocean, further research and observation on that moon are needed to establish the likely origins of those eruptions.
More information should be available from the future Europa Clipper mission.
However, this new analysis ignores earlier research that suggests Enceladus' south pole is warmer than predicted, only a few feet beneath its ice surface, and what maintains the core of this tiny moon warm enough to host a liquid subsurface ocean.
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