Saturn's own orbiting winter wonderland, Enceladus, could be in the midst of a relative dry spell, according to new measures on the thickness of its snowdrifts by a team of researchers from across the US.
Ruling out a source of impacts and a range of other geological activities, planetary scientists concluded the circular and elliptical pits – some up to a kilometer across – were formed as fractures in the crust beneath loose drifts of regolith extended and widened.something about the properties and formation of the regolith crumbling into them, including an approximation of its thickness.
Applied to the craters on Enceladus, the formulae revealed thicknesses of snow averaging around 250 meters, with some depths adding up to around 700 meters. Taking into account the rate at which plumes of icy ocean water could deliver an appropriate amount of snow, one way Enceladus could lay down enough snow in the past few billion years of theThough not completely out of the question, it's more likely that the snow contains a mix of densities and porosities, prompting the researchers to suggest the rate of snowfall had to have occasionally been much greater in the past.
That means the geysers might have been positively roaring at one point, or there were additional plumes spewing out frozen water vapor in Enceladus's history. If not both.'s dusting of snow is at critical locations would be vital for landing probes on its surface in the future. In the meantime, understanding better how cryovolcanic activity has evolved on Enceladus gives us fresh insights into one of the Solar System's most fascinating bodies.
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