Geysers

A NASA spacecraft has helped scientist find 101 geysers on one of Saturn’s moons. The cosmic hot spot, Enceladus, is spraying water and ice from its vast underground seas through prominent “tiger stripe” fractures near its south polar region. The NASA spacecraft Cassini surveyed that area of the moon over a period of nearly seven years, creating a map of 101 geysers connected to small hot spots on the planet. Science has only known about the existence of the geysers since 2005, and there were competing views as to what caused them. One theory is that they are caused by the effects of Saturn’s tides, which cause the moon to flex and may cause interior fractures to rub together and generate heat that transforms ice into the geysers. Another theory held that the opening and closing of the fractures from the flexing allows water vapor to escape from below the surface. Studying the data showed that this second theory was probably the correct one, as the hot spots Cassini found were too small