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Saturn's moon Mimas might have its own subsurface sea

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  • Saturn's moon Mimas might have its own subsurface sea

    There's more to Mimas than meets the eye. The wobbles of one of Saturn's smallest moons hint at an unusual make-up below the surface – perhaps even an ocean of water hidden underground.

    Mimas isn't the first of Saturn's moon to show signs of being soggy. Enceladus spouts plumes of water at its south pole, perhaps seeded by a subsurface ocean. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is known to have rivers and lakes – albeit filled with liquid ethane and methane instead of water. But no one had thought to find fluids on Mimas: it has no geological activity or interior heating, telltale signs of concealed liquids.

    "People thought that this was a boring moon," says Radwan Tajeddine at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Most suspected that Mimas was either made up of solid rock, or perhaps a silicate core with an icy shell layered above.
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