![]() ![]() Together, these studies suggest the possibility that Triton may be hiding liquid beneath its surface, making it a potentially habitable site in the solar system. If the geysers draw water from a liquid ocean, samples of the interior may lie on the moon’s surface, ripe for the taking. Material from the plumes has recolored Triton’s surface: Voyager spotted streaks suggesting material fell from previously or currently active geysers. “Maybe Triton is like Enceladus and Europa, and there could actually be water plumes coming from an interior ocean,” says Mandt. With the discovery of geysers spouting water from Enceladus and Europa, scientists are taking another look at Triton’s plumes. As sunlight heated the ices, nitrogen could have jumped from solid to gas to become the plumes. She describes some of the reasoning as circumstantial, because the geysers appeared where the Sun was nearly directly overhead. “At the time, we developed a whole theory about solar-driven nitrogen geysers,” says Hansen, who was on the Voyager team. Voyager also glimpsed plumes of material shooting a few miles above the surface. Planetary scientists think that rising blobs of ice, known as diapirs, cause this terrain as they are pushed upward through the more brittle surface by heating from below. One of the moon’s most intriguing features is its cantaloupe terrain - rugged surface features that resemble the skin of the fruit whose name it bears. Whether that process comes from the movement of rocks or the effect of an ocean remains unclear. The reshaping and repaving of the terrain suggest that something is happening beneath the surface. The spacecraft revealed that the moon’s surface is young, with some estimates setting its age as low as 10 million years. Voyager glimpsed Triton only briefly, but that glimpse was tantalizing enough. ![]() “They, ‘You’ll find life, we’ll find it all over,’ ” Hansen says. Several years ago, at a meeting of planetary scientists, she recalls that many of the Earth-focused oceanographers present were confident that an extraterrestrial ocean would lead to the discovery of life. “On Earth, if you have liquid water, you’ve got life,” she says. Longtime Triton researcher Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona agrees that ocean worlds may be key sites for life to evolve. “The subsurface liquid water could have the potential for hosting life based on what we see in the depths of our own oceans.” “These are not just solid rock-and-ice bodies in the outer solar system,” says Kathy Mandt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Even some of the largest chunks of ice at the edge of the solar system could have water under the surface. Two of Jupiter’s other large moons, Callisto and Ganymede, may also have subsurface oceans, but thick crusts make access a challenge. Europa and Enceladus may be the best known after Earth, but dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres are also candidates for hosting liquid water beneath their surface. ![]()
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