Saturn moon’s hidden ocean
Researchers believe they have found evidence for a hidden ocean on Mimas, one of Saturn’s major moons. This makes Mimas a target for learning more about the origins of life in our solar system.
Saturn has 146 moons orbiting it. The biggest is larger than the planet Mercury; the smallest is roughly the size of a sports arena on Earth. Mimas, which was first discovered in 1789, is one of the major moons and is about 250 miles wide.
Experts used to think Mimas was mostly made out of solid ice and rock. In 2014, astronomers noticed its orbit around Saturn was wobbling. A wobbly orbit can be caused either by a core shaped like a rugby ball or a huge liquid ocean beneath the surface. At first, lots of astronomers argued against the suggestion that Mimas had an ocean because there is no sign of it on the surface.
To investigate more thoroughly, researchers looked at images taken by Cassini, a NASA spacecraft sent to study Saturn. The images showed that the moon’s orbit around Saturn drifted by about six miles over 13 years. The team’s calculations found that the only way Mimas could move in this way is if it had a hidden ocean under the surface. They think the ocean formed when the moon’s core warmed up and melted some of the ice. Mimas is just one of many moons that scientists think could have oceans below the surface. Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter and is the largest moon in the solar system, has more water in its ocean than all of the oceans on Earth. Titan, another of Saturn’s moons, is believed to have a salty ocean beneath the surface.
Space agencies want to study these oceans because they might be home to living organisms. However, the ocean on Mimas might not be old enough for life to have emerged there yet. It took hundreds of millions of years for life to develop on Earth and the ocean on Mimas is relatively young; it is less than 25 million years old.