Scientists Find New Evidence of Hidden Ocean World in Our Solar System - Futurism

Planetary scientists have a fascinating hypothesis about Saturn's smallest moon, Mimas, which they say may be home to a "stealth" underground ocean that's been hidden from our best observations.

Translation: Mimas' wobble seems to suggest that it could contain an ocean under its icy surface.

— Rhoden is one of the authors of a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters about the tantalizing hypothesis centered on Saturn's smallest and innermost moon, which she jokingly admitted looks "much like the Death Star from Star Wars" because of Herschel, its huge impact crater.

Rhoden worked with planetary researcher Adeene Denton, formerly a Perdue graduate student who now is getting her doctorate at the senior scientist's onetime employer, the University of Arizona — and both admit that there's still a lot left to figure out, especially if they are able to further bolster the Mimas ocean theory.

"If Mimas is an emerging ocean world, that places important constraints on the formation, evolution and habitability of all of the mid-sized moons of Saturn."

A random Saturnian moon may seem like a strange place for habitation, but with recent forays in habitable exoplanet research centering on bodies of water as homes for potential life, the discovery of an ocean on that distant celestial body within our Solar System could be massive.