There's a whole bunch of heat and vapor coming out of the south polar region and the ehat may mean there's an ocean under the ice. Enceladus is tiny (about the size of Great Britain), so by all rights it should have cooled off long ago. It's got an elliptical orbit about Saturn, and that means it can get heated from tidal deformation. The tidal heating can only be significant if there is an ocean, and the ocean can only exist if there's enough heating. If it freezes, it's frozen for good. My paper claims that under current conditions you can't get enough heating in the ice to keep the ocean from freezing
no subject
Date: 2007-08-04 05:31 pm (UTC)