But hey, if you prefer to assume we don’t know mathematics and that we haven’t modeled this jets*, I suppose nothing I can say will dissuade you from that.

* It’s been (and is being) done by several competing teams, in fact.

What I wonder, is are there any multi-organ life forms in all that water? It seems to me, something like jelly fish could be there.
That question’s for this moon and Europa.

Anyone care to speculate on how those vents manage to maintain their perfect parabolic nozzle shape, so they can blast collimated beams of matter hundreds of miles into space?

I haven’t seen any evidence that the emissions consists of collimated flows.

But in that is the case I assume that the emissions are so rarefied into the preexisting vacuum (well, almost, considering the ambient E ring) that they inhabit the < href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_molecular_flow">molecular flow regime of high vacuum. With in principle infinite free mean paths there isn’t much angular divergence after passing a fairly short crack “collimator”.

But I’m curious about your proposed alternative, as I can’t imagine any geophysical process that would differ substantially in geometry from a crack. (I assume that larger open liquid areas would mostly ice over and narrow down naturally.)

Torbjörn Larsson is “all hot and bothered” but not the same way at all… probably.

No, I’m male. … so of course I jumped on the opportunity to take a crack at BA’s (intentional or unintentional) pun.

Me, I’m skeptical of perfectly parabolic nozzles formed and maintained in ice. We know of another mechanism to heat and loft material from a planetary surface that doesn’t demand a subterranean ammonia ocean or magical nozzles, but it involves mathematics that astronomers, as a rule, dislike intensely.

The degree of credulity needed to accept the perfect-nozzles alternative is breathtaking. Never let an astronomer pretend skepticism.

I really love those warm vents,,,

GAry 7