Space & Astronomy

Extraterrestrial life could be thriving near Uranus, new study finds

By T.K. Randall
November 8, 2024 ·  4 comments

Uranus and its moons. Image Credit: NASA / JPL It seems that there could be yet another subsurface ocean of liquid water in the solar system - with Miranda, a moon of Uranus, joining the ranks alongside Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus as promising places to look for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

One of our solar system's most unusual moons, Miranda - which was photographed by the Voyager 2 spacecraft back in the 1980s - has a surface covered in strange grooves and unusual patterns thought to be indicative of tidal forces and internal heating.

By revisiting these images and attempting to reverse-engineer the processes that could have produced such a surface, scientists were able to determine that Miranda could very well have a subsurface ocean of liquid water (or at least did have one several hundred million years ago).This hidden ocean would be around 62 miles deep and hidden beneath 19 miles of thick icy crust.

Incredibly, Miranda itself is relatively tiny with a radius of just 146 miles, meaning that such an ocean would make up almost half of its entire body.

"We won't know for sure that it even has an ocean until we go back and collect more data," said co-author Tom Nordheim, a planetary scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"We're squeezing the last bit of science we can from Voyager 2's images. For now, we're excited by the possibilities and eager to return to study Uranus and its potential ocean moons in depth."

Source: Phys.org | Comments (4)

Tags: Uranus, Miranda