“Maybe we didn’t get the straw all the way through the ice shell to the ocean. Maybe we’re just getting this weird pocket.”
One of the most convincing pieces of evidence was the fact that the plumes contain salts, said physicist Colin Meyer of Dartmouth in a talk at the meeting, which was held virtually and in New Orleans. Early versions of the quake idea couldn’t account for those salts, and instead suggested that any salts in the melted ice would be left on the surface as the water escaped into space, like the sheen of salt left on your skin after you sweat, he says.
But Meyer, who has studied the physics of sea ice on Earth, realized that pockets of meltwater in the ice shell could concentrate salts and other compounds. He, Buffo and colleagues applied computer simulations developed for sea ice on Earth to the observed icy conditions on Enceladus. The team found that Enceladus could easily generate pockets of mush within its shell and vent the contents of that mush out into space, salts and all.
That does not mean Enceladus doesn’t have an ocean, Meyer says — it almost certainly does. And it does not mean the ocean isn’t habitable, Buffo adds. The implications of the results “are huge,” especially for proposed life-finding missions to Enceladus, says planetary scientist Emily Martin of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the work.
“If those plumes aren’t tapping into the ocean, it will really shift our perspective on what that plume is telling us about the interior of Enceladus,” Martin says. “And that’s a big deal.”
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