Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>>Joe: A small moon, with a 310 mile diameter, kicking it off the space coast of Saturn just whispered
a big secret into our knowledge spots.
>>Elliott: It has an ocean! Boom.
>>Joe: Boom indeed. The Cassini spacecraft has been data mining Saturn’s sixth largest
moon, known as Enceladus, and that data suggests a Lake Superior sized reservoir of liquid
water swishy-swishes on the south pole.
>>Elliott: But there’s a catch.
>>Joe: Ahh, there’s always a catch with discoveries on extraterrestrial bodies.
>>Elliott: The water exists beneath a thick 18 to 24 mile thick slab of ice. But it’s
still cool, because the subsurface body of water could…(Elliott walks up to camera
and whispers) support life.
>>Joe: (IN the background) Ohhhhhhhhhhh….. (Normal frame) Cassini’s gravity measurements
suggest that the ocean does in fact exist and scientists believe it rests on the planet’s
rocky core, which, they think could be silicate rock, which, could infuse the water with dope
elements like sodium, potassium, sulfer, and phosphorous.
>>Elliott: And as far as our feeble, tiny minds figure, those are the elements required
to create life…
>>Elliott: Life as we know it. And what’s cool about this little space rock is that
there are fissures in the ice, known as tiger stripes, that blast molecules into the atmosphere.
And a mass spectrometer detects water and organic molecules in the stew of crap ejected
forth in the plume.
>>Joe: That organic material doesn’t necessarily point to “life”, but a more kick-butt
instrument could better analyze those molecules and open the door to more space secrets.
>>Joe and Elliott: (At the camera lens again) Tell us your secrets space. Tell us. We won’t
tell anyone. Space Secrets. (We just lower out of frame…beat…our hands pop up) Space
secrets.. Secrets.