New ideas have sprung up on the source behind Enceladus's ever-flowing geyser.
,” and the geyser that burst through them. As Enceladus heats and cools down in orbit, its icy crust buckles under pressure, allowing water to spill towards the surface.The cycles of heating and cooling are driven by the movement of the moon itself. Every hundred million years or so, the shape of Enceladus’s orbit around Saturn changes, from more circular to more oval and back. When the orbit is more oval, the moon is squeezed tighter by Saturn’s gravity and then released.
as the soft interior expands. The buildup takes millions of years, but the fissure appears in seconds, starting at the surface and shooting down about nine miles to the underground ocean. But the pressure alone doesn’t quite explain the geyser. According to the models run by Rudolph and his team, even all the newly formed ice isn’t enough to squeeze water to the surface. Anddon’t show telltale traces of liquid water spilling out across the moon’s smooth exterior.
Any one crack leading to the ocean wouldn’t produce much water. Deep in the fissures, the water probably simmers, and a person standing on the surface would be surrounded by a fine mist, not a jet. It would take many crevasses and tubes to produce the geyser humans have photographed from space. Nakajima says that if the explanation is correct, there are many cracks smaller than the tiger stripes on Enceladus that astronomers haven’t gotten close enough to see yet.
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