Q: Shouldn't a planetary body this size be out of salt water by now IF it were hundreds of millions or billions of years old?
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Hebrews 1:3
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Hebrews 1:3
".....researchers have discovered that the ice on Saturn’s moon Enceladus is fresh and regenerates, providing new insights into processes in our solar system.
Just a small shift in wavelength, from optical to infrared, reveals an astounding sight on the moon; glistening, fresh ice caps, which contrast with the pockmarked and scarred surface, riddled with chasms, gorges and other geographic blemishes.
Cassini previously discovered plumes of salt water shooting out of four parallel gorges on the moon’s south pole, known as the ‘tiger stripes.’
As Enceladus orbits around Saturn, the planet’s tidal forces pull and stretch the moon, creating a variety of fissures, cracks and assorted canyons and gorges, while also producing geothermal heat which spews forth from the south pole in the form of heated water vapor.
This vapor, in turn, freezes in the atmosphere and forms the fresh sheets of ice across the surface, creating this persistent resurfacing effect.
Crystalline ice is rarely found in the cold, inhospitable wilderness of space, as it requires warmer temperatures than you’d find beyond Earth; a relatively warm ~110 Kelvin (-163 Celsius, -261 Fahrenheit). At these temperatures, water molecules retain enough energy to keep a crystalline form rather than an amorphous blob of ice which is what we usually find in space, thanks to more extreme cold temperatures.
Furthermore, the spectral signature of crystalline ice was found across the globe, not just in the regions near the so-called ‘tiger stripe’ geysers at the south pole, indicating that the process is ongoing and somewhat predictable." NW
