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Water Discovered On Saturn Moon

POSTED: 4:22 am PDT March 27, 2008
UPDATED: 4:25 am PDT March 27, 2008

Water geysers have been discovered in space.

Scientists are excited about these Yellowstone-like geysers found on one of Saturn's moons because water means life.

The geysers are located at a moon that's orbiting Saturn.

They are gigantic in size and NASA just flew a space probe through them.

"We see on Enceladus the three basic requirements for the origin of life," Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado said.

The small moon Enceladus is imbedded in the rings at the planet Saturn.

At the South Pole, geysers of water are visible.

Scientists can confirm this because the probe Cassini has flown right through them and found water vapor, along with particles of ice, being spewed out at more than 1,000 mph.

Scientists are comparing the geysers to those on Earth, but they're much bigger, and they're shooting their contents out into space.

It appears these geysers occur for the same reason as the ones on Earth: heat. Heat in the center of the planet may be warming the ice enough to cause explosions of water vapor and ice, and heat is the second ingredient needed for life. The third is organic material -- what humans are made of. Enceladus has all the elements and scientists are looking for whether there's enough heat to melt the ice into subsurface oceans where life could exist.

"And if that water might be a habitat for life. These are the questions that Cassini will focus on in our future flybys," Esposito said.

To comment on this story, send an e-mail to Dan Billow.


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