Slow freezing separates salts within Enceladus-like ocean droplets (IMAGE)
Caption
Elemental maps of laboratory-frozen droplets containing major salt components expected in Enceladus' ocean. Each column shows the distribution of a different element, while the rows represent different cooling rates. At slower cooling rates, salts become increasingly separated into distinct regions within the droplets, particularly chloride salts associated with sodium and potassium. With faster cooling, the elements remain more uniformly distributed. These experiments show how slow freezing could produce the chemical segregation needed to explain the diverse ice grains detected by Cassini. Scale bars represent 50 micrometres.
Credit
Postberg et al., Science Advances (2026)
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License
CC BY-NC