TO ENCLADEUS!
Very interesting!
On a completely different topic, i find the title of that article rather humorous.
It reminds me of a while back when I suddenly realized a surprising portion of the general population thinks that water Is only found on Earth. The title makes the water into the headline, when in fact the news stoty is really about heated water AND chemicals. Makes me wonder, are there still people out there who think water is RARE in the solar system??? :hmm:
Yes, also we have to make a distinction between liquid water, and frozen water and water vapor. Frozen water and water vapor are known on Mars, not yet liquid. Very strong circumstantial evidence exists that liquid water exists on many if not all of the large moons of the gas giants.
Could liquid water exist within the large outer dwarf planets such as Pluto? In the case of Enceladus it now believed chemical reactions contribute to the existence of liquid water there. But how long could such chemical reactions persist on Enceladus or a dwarf planet? At some point you would think it would run out of material to do the chemical reactions.
If the heat was escaping, that would mean the material would get used up more rapidly. But being enclosed under ice and rock little heat would escape and the materials performing the chemical reactions might get recycled. At least for Enceladus some relatively small amount of heat and material escapes through the geysers but considering the mass of the moon, this could still last quite a long time.
Bob Clark
