Find your way into the 'water world' that contains alien life?

An American team has finally unlocked the green "tiger tiger" mystery on the icy moon Enceladus, the supposedly habitable object orbiting Saturn.

According to astronomer Max Rudolph of the University of California, a member of the research team, they have created a computer model from the data that NASA has collected over the years to learn about the physical forces that influence it. this moon.

Enceladus Moon - (photo: DOTTED YETI)

They focus on a rather strange feature: not all the moon has a "tiger stripes", but it is mainly located at the southernmost tip of the celestial body. The result was quite unexpected: in the olden past, it was simply that this area had accidentally cracked. Then, strong gravity from Saturn created tides so intense that water was repeatedly sprayed and pulled down through cracks, making these "wounds" never heal.

Enceladus' eccentric trajectory also contributes to the healing of these wounds. It constantly changes the distance to Saturn, so the ice surface is also constantly deformed and unable to completely freeze in position but "striped".

In fact, the first crack in the past may also be related to this constant change in gravity, because when the water freezes, the icy layer will gradually thicken at the bottom (the water always grows like it when freezing), creating a growing pressure in the ocean, to eventually escape somewhere. It must be the place with the thinnest layer of ice - the poles, and in this case, the Antarctic ice has broken.

This finding has a bigger implication: if it is the continuous deep fissures with normal water, then it is the access to the ocean under the icy surface of Enceladus.

Earlier, NASA's Cassini spacecraft had encountered something strange erupting from a crack on Enceladus' surface. The results of the analysis show that what erupted was complex, carbon-rich organic molecules - which could be traces of extraterrestrial life! The moon also possesses a hydrothermal system similar to the hydrothermal system in some areas of the Earth's ocean floor, where it is thought to harbor primitive life.

1. An overview of Saturn's moon Enceladus
2. Curious with the giant Y on the Enceladus Moon