Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/07/mimas-has-a-liquid-ocean.html
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Now I guess the question is what kind of liquid ocean does it have?
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Always could be wrong about latest theories, yet Mimas had some density calculations which pointed at a composition of water, so if there’s liquid it would be water …maybe.
ref1 | ref2 | ref3 |
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Maan, it’s never whiskey. Stupid space.
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Champagne and orange juice.
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Salty?
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A heady mix of water and ammonia is the best candidate - so an ocean of bathroom cleaner.
I guess it must be tidal resonance that’s generating the heat - IIRC it’s in a 2:1 resonance with the more massive moon Tethys, but I’m not sure if that could produce enough energy.
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In an infinite universe all things are possible. That suggests a planet with a Mimosa ocean somewhere out there. Or a moon, circling the planet Margarita (with a ring of salty asteroids, of course).
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And I know just how to find it!
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When I as a kid, we were told that life, as we knew it, was probably limited to Earth in the solar system, as no other planet had liquid water.
Now, we’re up to what, half a dozen confirmed and another few suspected?
If we ever do make contact with alien species, statistically speaking I’m afraid we’ll find that most of them come from icy bodies with liquid interiors orbiting gas giants, not rocky planets with damp surfaces. Considering the additional obstacles to space travel for such species, they may also be much more advanced scientifically before they make it off-planet, not sure how that would even play out.
Still, it would be amusing to finally get to drilling into the oceans on one of these icy moons and discover it was already colonized by crab-like aliens millennia ago, but they never even thought to look at the Earth, as it obviously couldn’t support intelligent life.
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Enceladus is my favorite property in the classic board game Solarquest, where the house rules are to pronounce it “enchiladas” and you always call the game’s currency “Space Bucks” and never Federons.
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It’d be interesting to come up with a plausible route to a technological civilisation that didn’t require harnessing fire - something that’s not possible in a submarine environment.
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ubiibi vita
Correcta.
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Yes, what are these shifty water-containing liquids that can support 5 miles of ‘rocky’ exterior? Oops! All corpses! But we’d approve of what had to die? One spherical-limit piet`a? Viridian Apartments? Chocolate volcano cake?
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Your third way sounds plausible.
Peculiarities in Mimas’s orbit had led astronomers to entertain two possibilities: either it contained an elongated core shrouded in ice, or an internal ocean that allowed its outer shell to shift independently of the core.
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Hydrothermal vents?
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