Some of Saturn’s moons may be much younger than previously thought

Ars Technica : The Saturn system is complex, comprising a gas giant surrounded by a series of planetary rings and some 62 moons. To study how the system evolved over time, Matija Ćuk of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and colleagues modeled the movements of the planet and its moons. They found that the orbits of several of Saturn’s inner moons—those traveling inside the orbit of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan—have not changed as much as would be expected had the moons been in existence for billions of years. Rather, Enceladus and other moons appear to be much younger, perhaps just 100 million years old. If so, they would have formed at the same time dinosaurs were roaming Earth. If the theory is verified by future observations, it is unlikely that Enceladus, which appears to have abundant water, would be old enough for life to have started developing in the warm, interior oceans.