article_snippet: Cassini team member Sean Hsu of the University of Colorado in Boulder used spacecraft observations and computer modeling to show that the plume is connected to what's happening on the lunar sea floor.
article_snippet: Judging by the team size and makeup, the team believes particles in the plume are the result of hot water coming into contact with rocks on the lunar sea floor.
article_snippet: The resulting mineral-rich water then shoots up through the icy crust and erupts into space in a plume of gas and ice.
article_snippet: This illustration depicts potential origins of methane found in the plume of gas and ice particles that sprays from Enceladus, based on research by scientists working with the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer. '
article_snippet: Hsu and Postberg worked closely with colleagues at the University of Tokyo who performed the detailed laboratory experiments that validated the hydrothermal activity hypothesis.
article_snippet: The second paper, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests hydrothermal activity as one of two likely sources of methane in the plume of gas and ice particles that erupts from the south polar region of Enceladus.
article_snippet: The finding is the result of extensive modeling to address why methane, as previously sampled by Cassini, is curiously abundant in the plume.
article_snippet: The team found that, at the high pressures expected in the ocean, icy materials called clathrates could form that imprison methane molecules within a crystal structure of water ice.
article_snippet: that imprison methane molecules within a crystal structure of water ice models indicate that this process is so efficient at depleting the ocean of methane that the researchers still needed an explanation for the researchers abundance in the plume.
article_snippet: A second possibility is that methane clathrates from the ocean are dragged along into the erupting plumes and release methane clathrates from the ocean methane as methane clathrates from the ocean rise, like bubbles forming in a popped bottle of champagne.
article_snippet: With Cassini powerful suite of complementary science instruments, the mission soon revealed a towering plume of water ice and vapor, salts and organic materials that issues from relatively warm fractures on the wrinkled surface.