To planetary scientists, Mimas—one of Saturn’s moons—is best known for its uncanny resemblance to the Death Star in Star Wars. While Mimas most definitely isn’t a planet-destroying superweapon, nobody could say with any certainty whether an abundance of liquid water was hiding beneath its icy shell. But a new paper, published today in Nature, has called it: That’s no moon; that’s an oceanic world. And this newfound ocean, against all expectations, appears to be a proverbial newborn on the timescale of the solar system.
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