Space & Astronomy

The moons of Uranus could be home to liquid water oceans

By T.K. Randall
May 9, 2023

Image: Artist's Concept of Voyager 1 (1990)
Credit: NASA/JPL / (PD) The ice giant Uranus is full of surprises, it seems - the latest of which being the discovery that several of its moons could be harboring vast subterranean oceans of liquid water.

Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon are all now thought to be promising candidates, with two of these even being warm enough internally to potentially sustain life.

The discovery was made when scientists compared data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft to more recent data collected about other icy moons such as Pluto's Charon and Saturn's Enceladus by NASA's Galileo, Cassini, Dawn and New Horizons missions.It had previously been thought that the only moon of Uranus capable of generating enough internal heat through radioactive decay was Tatiana, but now it seems as though this process might have also made internal oceans on three other moons possible as well.

Back in 2020, evidence of recent geological activity on Ariel also seemed to point to movement indicative of an interior ocean.

Conclusively determining that these oceans exist, however, will likely prove quite a challenge.

Source: Live Science

Tags: Uranus