Randy Kirk thinks that there’s an ice volcano on Saturn. And dammit, I hope the guy is right. Tell us more, New Scientist!

Named Sotra, the volcano is nearly 1 kilometre tall and has a 1.6-kilometre-deep pit alongside it. Surrounded by giant sand dunes, it is thought to be the largest in a string of several volcanoes that once spewed molten ice from deep beneath the moon’s surface.

“We think we have found the strongest case yet for an ice volcano on Titan,” said Randy Kirk, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona. “What we see is not just a flow like we see in other places, it’s like a volcanic field would be on Earth.”

[cont]

The team cannot be certain if the chain is active, but described the find as the best evidence found so far for a cryovolcano, or ice volcano. Previously, bright spots seen in low-resolution satellite images have been interpreted as volcanic flows and craters. However, once those areas were mapped in 3D, it became obvious they weren’t volcanoes.

“We had noted Sotra Facula as a candidate cryovolcano before,” said Rosaly Lopes at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “But it was only when Randy got the topography done that we realised, wow, this is it.”

Righteous. But what is even more righteous? The concept of a fucking cryovolcano. You can’t just call that shit an ice volcano. That sounds pedestrian! Cryovolcano! A volcano that shoots molten ice. I have a space-dork chubby. This shit ounds like something I absolutely need to cast in an RPG.

Oh shit! Fresh in time for the holiday season, where we glue bibles to our hearts and proclaim the coming of our Lord, NASA may be about to throw a curve ball into our collective balls. Maybe! It’s always maybe, isn’t it? Fuck me, I know. NASA is gathering an impressive collection of folks to speak at a press conference on Thursday. Who do you ask? Why, none other than an oceanographer, a biologist, and an ecologist! Wait, that doesn’t mean anything to you? Yeah, me neither.

io9 explains:

Blogger Jason Kottke did some inspired sleuthing regarding what Thursday’s press conference might be about. He discovered the expertises of the various people involved include the interaction of geology and life on alien planets (specifically Mars), photosynthesis using arsenic, Saturn’s moon Titan as an early Earth environment, and the chemistry of life, including in places without carbon, water, or oxygen.

Taking that all together and combined with the current blitz of news from NASA’s Cassini probe around Saturn, Kottke guesses the announcement might have something to do with the discovery of arsenic on Titan and, quite possibly, some primitive bacterial form of life using it for photosynthesis.

Well, shit. I thought they were about to inform us of the existence of a species of nine-foot tall blond women with breasts unbothered by gravity, who only want nothing more than to procreate with us. All of us. And give us eternal life. But seriously though, this was be fun as fuck. Some incontrovertible proof of life afar? Even if it’s just some bacteria hanging out? Hey man, we came from fuggin’ muck. This would be dope.

Time to get those Bible Editors out, and talk about the time that God sneezed on Titan!