In what was thought to be the darkest and deadliest part of the Solar System, NASA’s Voyager 2 has made a shocking discovery.
A research team led by scientist Tom Nordheim from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL – USA) has revisited data from nearly 40 years ago from one of NASA’s farthest-traveled spacecraft in history.
This spacecraft is Voyager 2, which left the heliosphere a few years ago. However, in 1986, it flew by a small moon that seemed quite lifeless, named Miranda.
NASA data shows Miranda may harbor a subsurface ocean with life – Photo: NASA. (AI Image: Anh Thư).
Miranda is the smallest moon and one of the innermost satellites of Uranus, named after the character Miranda in William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.”
This moon is one of the smallest spherical objects in the Solar System, shaped by its own gravity, with a radius of just 235 km and a complex surface.
Miranda has long been known, but it was considered a barren rock like most celestial bodies in the dark regions of space, far from the Sun.
However, now, as the research team maps the different surface features of Miranda and develops a computer model to simulate its internal structures, they have found evidence of something shocking: A subsurface ocean.
This ocean is estimated to be up to 100 km deep, encased in a thick rock and ice shell of about 30 km, and has existed for approximately 100 to 500 million years.
They estimate that this entire ocean occupies nearly half of Miranda’s volume.
“Finding evidence of an ocean within such a small object as Miranda is extremely surprising,” Dr. Nordheim told Space.com.
The study also suggests that in the past, the tidal interactions between Miranda and neighboring satellites played a significant role in keeping Miranda’s interior warm enough to sustain a liquid ocean.
Specifically, the gravitational stretching and compressing of Miranda, amplified by orbital resonance with other satellites, may have generated enough frictional heat.
Nevertheless, Miranda eventually lost synchronization with one of Uranus’s other moons, disabling the internal warming mechanism.
However, researchers do not believe that Miranda has completely frozen over, as if that were the case, it would have expanded and shown large cracks on its surface.
According to Newsweek, where there is water, there is potential for life. Therefore, scientists believe that Miranda could be a target for future missions searching for extraterrestrial life.
