Enceladus Spills Its Guts through Strike-Slip Motion

Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 01, 2024

Over the course of its elliptical orbit, the moon Enceladus is squeezed unevenly by Saturn's gravitational pull and deforms from a spherical shape into a football shape and back again. This cyclic stress causes a phenomenon called "tidal heating" within Enceladus and dissipates enough energy to maintain what is believed to be a global ocean underneath the moon's icy crust. At Enceladus's s