'Perrier Ocean' could be under the ice on Saturn's moon Enceladus

Icy jets erupting on Enceladus photo by cassini spacecraft

The mysterious icy jets erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus may have their roots in a bubbly "Perrier ocean" flowing beneath the moon's frozen surface, a new study finds.

This salty subsurface sea could feed violent geysers on Enceladus, supplying them with water, gas, dust and heat before sinking back to the dark depths.

"The realization that there's a circulation system inside of Enceladus is something that's a new way of thinking.

Mysterious geysers on an icy world

The ice geysers of Enceladus were first spotted in 2005 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which revealed jets of icy particles erupting from the moon's southern polar region. Enceladus is Saturn's sixth-largest moon.

The discovery jolted many astronomers — as did other evidence of a hot spot around Enceladus' south pole — showing that the small, frozen and presumably dead moon is geologically active.

More recent observations from Cassini have shown that the geysers are associated with Enceladus' "tiger stripes" — huge fissures in the moon's ice-covered surface.

Cassini has also found that the geysers contain water vapor, sodium salts, potassium salts and carbonates, suggesting that a sea of liquid water flows beneath the moon's icy crust.

The probe's observations revealed huge amounts of heat flowing through the tiger stripe region — about five times more heat per unit area than flows through Earth's geologic hot spot, Yellowstone National Park, scientists have said.

Such finds further intrigued scientists, but they didn't fully explain the fundamental nature of Enceladus' geysers or what was feeding them. The new results could help flesh out that explanation. Space.com