Mimas, a small moon orbiting Saturn, may be hiding the ocean under its frozen surface. Planetary Science Journal Icarus..
Mimas has a wobbling rotation, suggesting that it has either an elongated core or an inner ocean. Scientists were skeptical that the ocean was the cause, as mimas are so small that, unlike other marine satellites, there are no markers on the surface to indicate the ocean.
Ice satellite geophysical expert Alyssa Rhoden attempts to disprove the ocean hypothesis when she and her colleague Matthew Walker realize that they may actually be holding water. I did. Using a tidal heating model, they found a plausible description of a liquid sea beneath 14 to 20 miles of ice.
“I said that Mimas couldn’t have a sea, but what I was really saying was that having a sea would really challenge our intuition about Mimas. It was “Roden Told the New York Times.. “And when I realized, well, I thought it wasn’t the way scientists were supposed to work. I can’t draw conclusions without actually testing the hypothesis.”
Mimas’s potential secret sea has the potential to expand scientists’ notion of ice satellites. “If Mimas has a sea, it represents a new class of small’stealth’oceanic world with a surface that does not betray the existence of the sea,” Roden said. Press release..
Further investigation is needed to see if there is actually a sea beneath the surface of the sea, rather than a stretched core. “Mimas is a compelling target for ongoing investigation,” Roden said.
