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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 Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at 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 that the particles are produced by 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.

Mission scientists report these and other Enceladus findings in this week's issue of Science.

"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 Dr. John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.

"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust," said Dr. 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."

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

Scientists are also seeing variability at Enceladus. "Even when Cassini is not flying close to Enceladus, we can detect that the plume's activity has been changing through its varying effects on the soup of electrically-charged particles that flow past the moon," said Dr. Geraint H. Jones, Cassini scientist, magnetospheric imaging instrument, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

Scientists still have many questions. Why is Enceladus currently 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?

"Our search for liquid water has taken a new turn. The type of evidence for liquid water on Enceladus is very different from what we've seen at Jupiter's moon Europa. On Europa the evidence from surface geological features points to an internal ocean. On Enceladus the evidence is direct observation of water vapor venting from sources close to the surface," said Dr. Peter Thomas, Cassini imaging scientist, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

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 Cassini's four-year prime mission is over.

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

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the Caltech, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For images and more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Source: NASA/JPL

The Universe is extremely expansive, this is easier said then comprehended! Although space itself is said to go on infinitely, the matter in it does not. The small rock we live on, that we call Earth, orbits a star - our sun. This star is just one of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is a fairly large spiral galaxy that is approx 30,000 parsecs in diameter - the parsec is  defined as the distance from the sun which would result in a parallax of 1 second of arc as seen from Earth. 1pc equals 3.1x10^16meters! so the Milky Way is around 1.85 bilion trilion meters from one side to the other! Taking a step back our Milky Way one of a group of galaxies we call the Local Group. The Local group consists of 30+ galaxies including Andromeda (M31), The Whirlpool galaxy (M110), The small and large Magellanic clouds just to name a few. There are many clusters outside our own Local group such as the Fornax cluster which is found in the constellation of Fornax(see pic). The  Local group is in turn part of what is deem a super cluster of galaxy clusters and as far as we know there are hundreds upon thousands of super clusters... The universe is a big place, it would be an awfull waste of space if we where the only ones in it.

Time dilation can be caused by the curvature of space-time, which is caused by objects in space. The larger and more dense an object is the more it will curve space-time. The amount of space-time curvature is proportional to the inverse square of the distance from the object. Time dilation is proportional to the amount of space-time curvature and so a clock on the ground will run slower than an identical clock at a higher altitude(note that these differences are minute, but they have been tested and do exsist).

Where this really gets interesting is when one considers black holes. Black holes are formed when a sufficiently large star tuns out of its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own weight. The extreme amount of pressure can force the entire mass of the star to shrink to a singularity, around this singularity there is an event horizon at which the gravity has become so strong as to not even allow light to escape. The singularity is said to have infinite space-time curvature and hence an infinite time dilation factor.

An object cant really survive inside a black hole but fo the point of this discussion lets just say it can. Lets just say a person approaches a black hole, as they get closer time in their frame of reference will be slowing down, but they wont notice it. Once they get passed the event horizon where space time curvature becomes infinite, the time dilation becomes infinite. This means that for even the smallest increment of time that passes inside the black hole an infinite amount of time passes on the outside. This person has effectively just travelled to the end of time... but how can time end?