Publication Date:
2006-12-16
Description:
We hypothesize that active tectonic processes in the south polar terrain of Enceladus, the 500-kilometer-diameter moon of Saturn, are creating fractures that cause degassing of a clathrate reservoir to produce the plume documented by the instruments on the Cassini spacecraft. Advection of gas and ice transports energy, supplied at depth as latent heat of clathrate decomposition, to shallower levels, where it reappears as latent heat of condensation of ice. The plume itself, which has a discharge rate comparable to Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, probably represents small leaks from this massive advective system.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Kieffer, Susan W -- Lu, Xinli -- Bethke, Craig M -- Spencer, John R -- Marshak, Stephen -- Navrotsky, Alexandra -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Dec 15;314(5806):1764-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1301 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. skieffer@uiuc.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17170301" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Carbon Dioxide
;
Extraterrestrial Environment
;
Gases
;
*Ice
;
Mathematics
;
Methane
;
Models, Theoretical
;
Nitrogen
;
Pressure
;
*Saturn
;
Spacecraft
;
Temperature
;
Water
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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