Mystery behind 'tiger stripes' on Saturn's icy moon decoded by Scientists

Scientists decoded reason behind ‘tiger stripes’ on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn which has a liquid ocean under its icy surface. ‘tiger stripes’, first seen by Cassini mission to Saturn, are considered as partially open fissures that connect to liquid water ocean beneath ice shell.

researchers, in a paper published in nature astromy, proposed that “secular cooling” leads to a thickening of ice shell and building of global tensile stresses which caused first fracture to form at one of poles. y examined reason behind presence of those stripes only on moon’s south pole. or intriguing nature of stripes is that y are evenly d.

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Reason behind south pole fissures

“To date, study simultaneously explains why tiger stripes should be located only at south pole, why re are multiple approximately parallel and regularly d fractures, what accounts for ir spacing of about 35 km, and why similarly active fissures have t been observed on or icy bodies,” research paper stated.

team of researchers came to a conclusion that fissures could have formed at eir pole, relieving stresses and preventing similar fissure at opposite pole, but south pole just happened to split open first. 

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“ steadily erupting water ice loads flanks of open fissure, causing bending in surrounding elastic plate and furr tensile failure in bands parallel to first fracture - a process that may be unique to Enceladus, where gravity is too weak for compressive stresses to prevent fracture propagation through thin ice shell,” research added.

According to researchers, Baghdad fissures, named after cities mentioned in Arabian Nights, was first to form. fissure allowed ocean water to spew which led to three more parallel cracks. jets of water under ocean surface froze and fell back which added to a new form of pressure causing additional splits.

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