Mystery geysers blasting out of the bottom of Enceladus have
confounded astronomers for almost a decade.   Astronomers
suggest that tidal tugs from Saturn likely explain the
mysterious geysers blasting off of one of the planet's small
moons.  The moon, Enceladus, was discovered to be releasing
plumes of water vapor from its south pole in 2005. Observations
made in a fly-over by the international Cassini spacecraft
revealed that the plumes emerged from four "tiger stripe"
fissures on the south pole of the moon.  Debate ensued over
whether the small moon, only about 310 miles wide, hosts a
hidden ocean under its icy crust and where the energy originated
that powered the plumes. One argument focused on whether
gravitational tidal forces alone (or else radioactivity in the
moon's core) could explain the plumes.  In the journal Nature, a
planetary science team led by Cornell's Matthew Hedman reports
the plumes appear several times brighter, and thus bigger, than
normal when Enceladus is farthest from Saturn on its