The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturn’s Death Star lookalike moon may have vast underground ocean
‘Remarkably young’ ocean makes it look potentially habitable.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — Astronomers have found the best evidence yet of a vast, young ocean beneath the icy exterior of Saturn’s Death Star lookalike mini moon.
The French-led team analyzed changes in Mimas’ orbit and rotation and reported Wednesday that a hidden ocean 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) beneath the frozen crust was more likely than an elongated rocky core. The scientists based their findings on observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which observed Saturn and its more than 140 moons for more than a decade before diving through the ringed planet’s atmosphere in 2017 and burning up.
Barely 250 miles (400 kilometers) in diameter, the heavily cratered moon lacks the fractures and geysers — typical signs of subsurface activity — of Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa.
“Mimas was probably the most unlikely place to look for a global ocean — and liquid water more generally,” co-author Valery Lainey of the Paris Observatory said in an email. “So that looks like a potential habitable world. But nobody knows how much time is needed for life to arise.”
Results were published in the journal Nature.
The ocean is believed to fill half of Mimas’ volume, according to Lainey. Yet it represents only 1.2% to 1.4% of Earth’s oceans given the moon’s petite size. Despite being so small, Mimas boasts the second largest impact crater of any moon in the solar system — the reason it’s compared to the fictional Death Star space station in “Star Wars.”
“The idea that relatively small, icy moons can harbor young oceans is inspiring,” SETI Institute’s Matija Cuk and Southwest Research Institute’s Alyssa Rose Rhoden wrote in an accompanying editorial. They were not part of the study.
Believed between 5 million and 15 million years old, too young to mark the moon’s surface, this subterranean ocean would have an overall temperature right around freezing, according to Lainey. But at the seafloor, he said, the water temperature could be much warmer.
Co-author Nick Cooper of Queen Mary University of London said the existence of a “remarkably young” ocean of liquid water makes Mimas a prime candidate for studying the origin of life.
Discovered in 1789 by English astronomer William Herschel, Mimas is named after a giant in Greek mythology.
I was a member of my high school science and engineering club and decided I wanted to build a robot — not just any robot, but a remote controlled one. It took me a year to finish.
I missed all of the school science fairs except the one that I was most excited about: The Engineering Technical Society science fair at the University of Alabama. At the competition, my robot, Linex, was set up on a table and the judges came around interviewing students and asking questions.
This was in the ’60 s and the year prior, the governor had stood in front of the door of the school saying Black students would not be allowed to come to that school.
Despite that, Linex won first place at the very university where the governor had blocked the door. Not only was Linex an engineering victory, but he was a moral victory as well!
Linex became a famous robot and appeared in school assemblies where I demonstrated him my to the entire school and was even on television, which was a big deal back then! My experience inspired me to continue creating and inventing, which I still am doing 60 years later.
At a recent school board meeting, City Schools of Decatur reported $88,000 in meal debt. This figure prompted leaders to announce that starting in February, students with debt from meal charges would be served cheese sandwiches and milk until the bills were paid.
The issue was swiftly resolved through the generosity of the Arby’s Foundation. However, the news has reignited a crucial conversation about the broader challenges Georgia’s children face. As someone deeply engaged in how our state raises and spends money, this story raised a lot of questions for me.
My mind went first to the kids.
The district broke down the owed debt, detailing that 46% derived from students who pay for lunch, 36% from those receiving free or reduced lunch, 6% from district staff and 12% from students no longer in the school district.
Then I wanted to get a grasp on how many kids count on school for their meals.
One in every 10 children in Georgia is living in a family that cannot afford basic necessities such as housing and food, according to the latest data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Atlanta Community Food Bank reports that 13.3% or 1 in 8 children in Georgia are food insecure.
These and other data points indicate that at least 62% of kids and families across our state need support.
And as bad as hunger is for children in Georgia, it does not occur in a vacuum. Historical and institutionalized statewide inequities have produced these cheese sandwiches.
So, then I ask, what is the government’s role in ensuring kids are fully nourished at school? And more importantly, do they have the capacity to address this need?
In Georgia, all K-8 schools with 25% or more free and reduced-price certified students, and all other schools with 40% or more free and reduced-price certified students are required to establish and support a School Breakfast Program. All public schools must participate in the National School Lunch Program. But neither of these programs ensures all kids are fed.
Considering the state’s unprecedented $16 billion reserves, allocating funds for our children seems not only reasonable, but imperative. Doing so could be an amazing legacy opportunity for our governor. I can picture a “feeding and growing our next generation” program that further partners with local agriculture to provide breakfast and lunch to every Georgia student in public schools.
In fact, a bill was introduced in 2023 (House Bill 510) for which a fiscal note was written, so we know the estimated cost. Breakfast and lunch for all students in Georgia would cost $189,884,788 annually in additional state funds and $431,977,819 in additional state funds if federal funds discontinued for breakfast subsidies. At current costs, that means $2.67 for breakfast and $4.58 for lunch.
Child hunger is directly related to child poverty and family poverty, so we also know that policy solutions that lift families out of poverty also benefit children — and help feed them. Child poverty could be reduced by as much as 60% by focusing on policy solutions such as a child tax credit, an earned income tax credit and the state minimum wage. According to NationalAcademies.org:
■ Georgia could increase the child and dependent care tax credit and make it fully refundable.
■ Georgia could implement an earned income tax credit and a child tax credit.
■ Georgia could increase the minimum wage.
Addressing child poverty isn’t as straightforward as earmarking $200 million from the $11 billion in undesignated reserves to feed schoolchildren for a year. Some lawmakers claim that committing recurring expenses with one-time “surplus” funds is irresponsible, but the numbers tell a different story. Georgia is on track to end fiscal year 2024 with another excess of unspent public funds, maintaining a trend of excess revenue since 2021 despite conservative revenue estimates.
And yes, it is good to have money socked away for emergencies, but the state already has a substantial $5.2 billion in the revenue shortfall reserve account.
So how about setting aside a portion of the undesignated funds to stand up a comprehensive meal program for all Georgia public school students? That would give the state plenty of runway to incorporate the recurring expense in the fiscal year budget.
Seems like a cakewalk to me, and an opportunity to go far beyond giving hungry Georgia children a cheese sandwich.
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to visit the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia, you know that it is a unique and irreplaceable treasure.
In the 1970s, Newt Gingrich was teaching environmental studies at what was then West Georgia College in Carrollton (now the University of West Georgia) and took his students on field trips to the Okefenokee Swamp. Just visualize it: A Volkswagen camping van, leaky tents, canoes that flipped over — and a professor with heavy sideburns, thick dark plastic glasses and a turtleneck. His family, including his daughter Jackie, would come along on some of those trips. For a grammar school child, it was heaven on earth.
The Okefenokee is North America’s largest blackwater wetland. It includes nearly 700 square miles of land, with 6,500-year-old peat islands that float on the water. Called the “Land of Trembling Earth,” by the Native Americans, the Okefenokee Swamp is a place like no other. The stars are more visible in the night sky due to low light pollution, and the area is inhabited by alligators, ducks, snakes, Sandhill cranes and otters. It’s been designated a National Wildlife Refuge; it simply could not be replaced if it was harmed.
Some 27 years ago, DuPont Chemical Corp. proposed mining titanium on 38,000 acres of land along Trail Ridge adjacent to the Okefenokee Swamp. At that time, Gingrich was serving as Speaker of the House, and leaders from Washington to Atlanta seemed united in opposing this foolhardy plan. Then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, urged DuPont to abandon its plans. Democratic Georgia Gov. Zell Miller did as well. This was a bipartisan issue, and we were in total agreement.
It was decided that mining on Trail Ridge adjacent to the Okefenokee Swamp simply presented too great a risk to the wetland environment. DuPont ultimately abandoned its plans. Today, roughly 16,000 acres of the proposed mining site have been permanently protected from future mining operations, but tens of thousands of acres of Trail Ridge still remain susceptible to mining.
Unfortunately, the Okefenokee now faces a similar threat. There is a proposal to begin mining for titanium-bearing minerals on a 700-acre portion of the site. It is under permit review by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to determine whether or not to allow digging of 50-foot-deep pits into Trail Ridge, the eastern border of the swamp which serves as a dam holding water in the swamp.
While the Alabama company proposing the mine has claimed the operation will have limited to no impact to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, nearly 100 scientists have written an open letter opposing such mining.
“A majority of established research supports the claims that mining close to the swamp has a high likelihood of causing permanent damage to the swamp and surrounding areas,” they wrote.
Just think about it: If you have land next to a swamp, and you dig up the land to mine, the water level in the swamp will likely be affected. It’s just common sense.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Park Service hydrologists expect that mining will lower water levels in the swamp, harming swampbased recreation and tourism worth $65 million to the region annually.
They also warn that mining-induced drought would heighten the chances of more frequent and extreme wildfires that could devastate commercial forests surrounding the swamp. The most expensive fire in Department of Interior’s history is the Okefenokee’s Big Fire of 2007. It spread across the entire swamp to adjacent private lands in Georgia and Florida, destroying $113 million of private timber and costing $100 million to put the fire out. We cannot increase the risk of that happening again.
The Georgia General Assembly has the opportunity to pass historic bipartisan legislation by voting in favor of the Okefenokee Protection Act. Introduced by Republican leaders, House Bill 71 is now co-sponsored by over half the Georgia House of Representatives from both parties.
We urge all Georgia representatives and senators to take up this important matter to conserve Okefenokee’s Trail Ridge, and for you to reach out and encourage your legislators to co-sponsor and pass the bill, as well. Together, we can make sure that the Okefenokee Swamp will be there for generations to come.
Once again, we can save the Okefenokee Swamp — this time forever. Jackie Gingrich Cushman is an author and strategic consultant, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Trust for Public Land for Alabama and Georgia. She lives in Atlanta. Newt Gingrich is a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and congressman from Georgia. He is now chairman of Gingrich 360, a multimedia production company based in Arlington, Virginia.