Enceladus: Frozen Stripes and Frozen Pipes

Ever since the Cassini probe photographed them in 2005, the tiger stripes on Saturn’s moon Enceladus have stumped scientists. At the south pole of this icy moon are four parallel fissures up to 80 miles long, constantly spewing water from the ocean beneath.

Although Enceladus isn’t the only icy moon in our solar system, it is the only one with bleeding slashes across its surface. How did they get there? Through extensive computer modeling, researchers believe they have finally found a simple answer. During a cooling phase in the moon’s history, expanding ice broke the surface, like pipes freezing under your house. The ice at the poles is thinner, so cracks formed there.

On a body with higher gravity, like other icy moons in our own system, the weight of the ice would have simply welded the cracks shut again. But on Enceladus, gravity is not such an effective plumber. So the cracks continue to spew geysers, rich with hydrogen and organic molecules.

Those organic compounds make Enceladus not just a geological puzzle but also a top candidate for secular scientists to explore for extraterrestrial life. That incidental fact points to two very different reasons for conducting scientific research.

We don’t need extraterrestrial life to give our own lives meaning.

Exploration and discovery are part of our God-given mandate to have dominion over creation. Even unbelievers can unintentionally bring God glory when they uncover the richness of his works through their research. But for believers, glorifying God is the whole purpose of science and every other human endeavor.

The big question for evolutionary science is, “Where did life come from?” This question is at the root of virtually every space probe’s mission, as well as most secular research in other sciences. Searching for this answer is really the exact opposite of glorifying the Creator—it’s denying his act of creation and looking for meaning elsewhere.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with looking for life elsewhere in the universe—extraterrestrial life would doubtless be one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. But we don’t need extraterrestrial life to give our own lives meaning. God did that when he created Adam and Eve in his own image to fellowship with him and care for creation—including a tiger-striped moon almost 800 million miles from earth.