Yeah, if there was any doubt that an outer moon could contain liquid water, Enceladus’ active geysers firmly ended that speculation.
Europa’s ocean may be on the order of 100 km in depth. By comparison, Earth’s average about 4 km. That would make Europa have far more water than Earth despite being smaller than our Moon.
It seems as more data come in, it’s getting more and more likely that subsurface liquid water is common in the outer solar system, and that many other moons have varying amounts of it. Even Titan may have water someplace below its surface lakes of liquid methane. The inner solar system is more of a desert, and we are lucky to have what we have.
If you want more mind-blowing stuff, check out discoveries being made about exoplanets (planets around other stars). These were only detected in the 90s, but there are thousands we know about now, and there are some absolutely crazy examples among them.
Yeah, if there was any doubt that an outer moon could contain liquid water, Enceladus’ active geysers firmly ended that speculation.
Europa’s ocean may be on the order of 100 km in depth. By comparison, Earth’s average about 4 km. That would make Europa have far more water than Earth despite being smaller than our Moon.
It seems as more data come in, it’s getting more and more likely that subsurface liquid water is common in the outer solar system, and that many other moons have varying amounts of it. Even Titan may have water someplace below its surface lakes of liquid methane. The inner solar system is more of a desert, and we are lucky to have what we have.
If you want more mind-blowing stuff, check out discoveries being made about exoplanets (planets around other stars). These were only detected in the 90s, but there are thousands we know about now, and there are some absolutely crazy examples among them.