{"id":183264,"date":"2024-02-21T11:29:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T17:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/mimas-surprise-tiny-moon-holds-young-ocean-beneath-icy-shell"},"modified":"2024-02-21T11:29:31","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T17:29:31","slug":"mimas-surprise-tiny-moon-holds-young-ocean-beneath-icy-shell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/mimas-surprise-tiny-moon-holds-young-ocean-beneath-icy-shell","title":{"rendered":"Mimas\u2019 surprise: Tiny Moon holds Young Ocean beneath Icy Shell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mimas-surprise-tiny-moon-holds-young-ocean-beneath-icy-shell3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hidden beneath the heavily cratered surface of Mimas, one of Saturn\u2019s smallest moons lies a secret: a global ocean of liquid water. This astonishing discovery, led by Dr. Val\u00e9ry Lainey of the Observatoire de Paris-PSL and published in the journal Nature, reveals a \u201cyoung\u201d ocean formed just 5 to 15 million years ago, making Mimas a prime target for studying the origins of life in our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMimas is a small moon, only about 400 kilometers in diameter, and its heavily cratered surface gave no hint of the hidden ocean beneath,\u201d says Dr. Nick Cooper, a co-author of the study and Honorary Research Fellow in the Astronomy Unit of the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis discovery adds Mimas to an exclusive club of moons with internal oceans, including Enceladus and Europa, but with a unique difference: its ocean is remarkably young, estimated to be only 5 to 15 million years old.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hidden beneath the heavily cratered surface of Mimas, one of Saturn\u2019s smallest moons lies a secret: a global ocean of liquid water. This astonishing discovery, led by Dr. Val\u00e9ry Lainey of the Observatoire de Paris-PSL and published in the journal Nature, reveals a \u201cyoung\u201d ocean formed just 5 to 15 million years ago, making Mimas [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}