Quote:The ocean, sprawling over the moon's south pole, is estimated to be about eight kilometres deep, covering about as much area as Lake Superior, the BBC reports.


"It's even possible that it's global," study co-author and planetary scientist David Stevenson tells CBC'S Quirks & Quarks. "All that we can say for certain is this layer of water is thickest at the south pole."


Sheathed in white ice, Enceladus is one of the brighter shiny baubles among Saturn's 53 known moons. But its beauty is more than skin deep. While the ocean may seem entombed in ice, team leader Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome, suggests it stays relatively fluid, thanks to tides -- and those tides, in turn, build friction , essentially heating the water.