Abstract
The recent discovery of active water-venting from the surface of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus has caused a ripple of excitement as it suggests the possibility of subsurface liquid water. Geologically, Enceladus poses problems. One, the reason why the hotspot of geological activity is centred precisely on the south pole, has been tackled by Francis Nimmo and Robert T. Pappalardo. They identify reorientation of Enceladus's rotation axis as the likely cause, and an upwelling of low-density material to the surface as the cause of that reorientation. Comparison of the distribution of impact craters on the ‘leading’ and ‘trailing’ hemispheres will be a good test of the reorientation part of the theory.
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