Here is the link to the one story I was able to find on it..

http://cfnews13.com/StoryHeadline.aspx?id=13873

There sever seems to be getting hammered so while I have the story up I'll give the details here (its short).

Link doesn't work for me...

same here.

A server error. I'll look for the story though.

Yeah - as I said, the site seems to be getting hammered. That's why I quoted the text of the article in the op.

I did find a little more - It is probably related to this.

Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

I think their web site is

http://www.cfnews13.com/ but currently showing SERVER TOO BUSY..

They are a News station out of Central Florida I believe....

Interesting find.

That's funny, i was looking at Saturn's satellites yesterday night, and i read this:

Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus] is one of the innermost moons of Saturn. It is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of Enceladus shows craters no larger than 35 km in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations. All of this indicates that the interior of the moon may be liquid today, even though it should have frozen aeons ago. It is postulated that Enceladus is heated by a tidal mechanism similar to Jupiter's moon Io. It is perturbed in its orbit by Saturn's gravitational field and by the large neighboring satellites Tethys and Dione. Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is only -201° C (-330° F).

But for life to develop in this environment (temperature) is unlikely...


LINK: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/enceladu.htm

Looks like they've changed it a bit, now reads:



So, not life in the solar system after all...

No doubt the conspiracy freaks will have a filed day though

I managed to get on the News site... here is a snap shot image of what Frogs is speaking about.. their site is VERY slow.




So around 2 PM EST we will hopefully hear updated news to this.. (looks like they updated this report from what they originally reported earlier on this site)

hmmm cant wait til 2 ...maybe they are gonna announce life?

Water finds are always good.

Its posted on a local news affiliate...has something to do with jobs or a new plant opening i'm sure...

Site is still offline. but only 20 minutes or so to go Hope they have some real news.

On CNN...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/09/e...r.ap/index.html

Seems to be it...

yep.. and FINALLY NASA reports this on their web site (it was not there earlier today but is now)

Erica Hupp/Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
(202) 358-1237/1726

Carolina Martinez
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(818) 354-9382


March 9, 2006
RELEASE: 06-088

NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."

High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.

"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust," said Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."

"As Cassini approached Saturn, we discovered the Saturnian system is filled with oxygen atoms. At the time we had no idea where the oxygen was coming from," said Candy Hansen, Cassini scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. "Now we know Enceladus is spewing out water molecules, which break down into oxygen and hydrogen."

Scientists still have many questions. Why is Enceladus so active? Are other sites on Enceladus active? Might this activity have been continuous enough over the moon's history for life to have had a chance to take hold in the moon's interior?

In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles), but much work remains after the spacecraft's four-year prime mission is over.

"There's no question, along with the moon Titan, Enceladus should be a very high priority for us. Saturn has given us two exciting worlds to explore," said Jonathan Lunine, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

Mission scientists report these and other Enceladus findings in this week's issue of Science. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For Cassini images and information about the research on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/home

- end -
Link:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/H...turns_moon.html

This is not really a news, 'cause i've heard about it a while ago, last year i think, when Cassini flew by that moon the first time...

Kind of cool to see this moon besides Saturn in your scope and think that there may be life on it !

yeah i just read this on yahoo...kinda cool hopfully theres life there


mabe they did find life there and the world governments stoped them from saying it and instead they have to say "evidence of water"

Pictures here




What do you guys think?

What do I think... I think you're jumping to conclusions. The title is "Saturn's moon *may* have water", then you claim liquid water has been found...

Without landing a rover or spacecraft there it would be very difficult to tell if there's in fact lifeforms of any kind under the surface of Enceladus...

Europa has ice sheets that harbor a ocean. The ice shows signs of floating and cracking. They do indeed drift.

Interesting..................

Stellar, the article is from NASA reported in USAToday. Johnny didn't jump to any conclusion he simply posted the article.

That Enceladus has water is known. The key, is whether it has liquid water.
Also, if there is enough energy in the system for metabolism of nutrients.

The exciting bit is that everywhere we find those conditions on Earth, we find biology.

Exactly

exciting news! and good for the future of space exploration too. water is a critical element for space expansion

this is even more significant than space exploration! this means that the chances of Life in other neiborhoods in the universe are greatly increased!

wow , absolutely fascinating!!! thnx for the info gyz. it appears the mysteries of life have just gotten more profound, one solar body at a time

HUH?? where did you get this information from?? WAY off on this one..

That's a little something I would call speculation or a guess.....

This is an exciting discovery . The more worlds we discover that have liquid water the greater the chance that life exists else where. Even if life does not exist elsewhere in this solar system the chances of it evolving elsewhere are getting higher and higher.

Who knows, maybe bacterial life on other planets do not even need water. The chemistry for life has yet to be determined.

nifty subject though, yet how could liquid water exist even though it is soo far from the sun...maybe the internal heat of the moon itself...meh, it's still a cool subject.

Hehe, twas only a matter of time......

Maybe readers of this thread should pay a visit to this thread to see how life might exist in dark, cold, underwater heat vents .

i am conspirisy



i was just joking with that but watch it be true


but seriously this is the second of saturns moons that have an unexpected feature

The process that generates this heat is not yet understood but it is thought to be caused by a combination of radioactive decay and flexing of the surface brought about by the particular characteristics of Enceladus' orbit.

There is more about this discovery on Unexplained Mysteries sister site, Spaceflight News: Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

the intense force gravitating Enceladus is enough but with the core, would heat up any water to a livable temperature.

If it is a tiny moon...and if it is continually spouting up water which is creating one of the rings of Saturn...and if there is a sea under the surface...

....how long could the moon continue to spout water until the sea ran dry?

there might be ways that the water renews itself.

Hard to say, but the point is, it's still spouting water today.
Another point is, how far back in the past did it start? Long enough ago for life to evolve? It has likely been spouting water since shortly after the moon formed or was captured by Saturn when tidal stretching by Saturn heated the interior enough to melt the ice. It may be small, but a 314 mile wide ball of ice is still one big ice cube!

Edit: Enceladus is likey a Kuiper belt object. There are tons of these icy worldlets out there waiting to be "kneeded into life!"

I'm pretty certain there is life... what I found frustrating is that all the probable places to find life forms in our solar system are shielded behind thick layers of ice as hard as steel (because of the low temperatures).

I'm pretty certain there are evolved life forms in Europa (maybe something similar to dolphins and fish), and perhaps some sort of marine insects in Enceladus.

It possible that unicellular life exists in one of these water worlds.

It is also quite plausible that zero life forms exist there. That is what I choose to believe.

which is a reasonable and understandable opinion, but i believe that there may at LEAST be bacteria or one celled organisims there.