Enceladus Expansion - not unlike the Earth

Enceladus is a Saturnian moon about 500 kilometers across, about one-seventh the diameter of Earth's moon. Enceladus is highly reflective, apparently its surface is water ice. Large areas of the moon are heavily cratered while other areas are relatively smooth. Long, parallel canyons separate the cratered areas from the smooth parts. These canyons are up to 200 km long, 5-10 km wide, and one km deep. The groves are extremely complex, smaller groves intersecting like chevrons.

Four ice jets

The south pole of Enceladus is tectonically active today. We can see the tectonic activity as it occurs. Four deep, parallel 'tiger paw" groves are active water volcanoes. The Cassini spacecraft photographed the plumes from several angles and lighting conditions as they spew ice mist into space. Here is a mosaic of the plumes taken with the Sun shining through the jets. Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI, mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society. Click here to see a larger version of Emily's imagine. http://planetary.org/image/N00146851_55_rotated_mosaic.png A heat map shows that the four rift valleys are warmer than the surrounding surface. This suggests that warm waters are seeping up through cracks in the ice. Since Enceladus orbits in the densest part of Saturn's F ring, evidently the ring was formed from the moon's tectonic activity. The area between Enceladus' tiger paws is also covered with steep canyons. These canyons shows evidence that the tectonic features were once much closer together - that they continually spread apart.

The Earth also has a global expansion that continually spews out volcanic basalt. The expansion seam is clearly spreading out new crust - evidenced by a visible separation, new pillow lavas and magnetic stripes parallel to the rift. The expansion seam in many areas has the same contour as the opposite continents. Canyons perpendicular to the main rift point back to the continents that used to be together. Some of these canyons look like chevrons, slicing through each other. The continents only fit together on a minuscule planet. The scientific theory of subduction is visibly denied by the undisturbed sediments in the "subduction zones."

What could cause moons and the Earth to grow in size. The wonderful thing about cosmic history is that it is visible. We see the past at many ranges back to near the beginning. Billions of galaxies visibly grew from dense clumps of primordial matter. Evidently the properties of matter are always emerging, since galaxies spread out, took up more space, as the stars accelerated out. Galaxies cannot grow into huge local growth spirals unless the properties of matter continually emerge, change relationally. Of course scientists cannot admit that the properties of matter are changing, since their empirical, mathematical system was historically founded on Aristotle's idea that all things remain the same. If matter is changing relationally, one could not measure it with measuring units that are based on the notion that atoms are unchanging. Yet anyone can see the evidence in billions of ancient galaxies through many eras that the properties of matter are always changing relationally. Think about it.

Read another essay on Plate Tectonics
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Last modified on November 27, 2009