The Mysterious Inner Workings of Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon

Above all, unlike the strange magnetic field of IO, which seemed to indicate that it concealed the value of the ocean of liquid, the magnetic signal of the Galileo era of Europa remains robust. “It is a result quite specific to Europa,” said Robert PappalardoThe scientist of the Europa mission project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The icy moon is far enough from Jupiter and the intense spatial environment at the entrance to IO’s plasma that the EUROPA magnetic induction signal “really exceeds”.

But if the two moons are heated to the tide, why only Europa has an inner ocean? According to Nimmo, “there is a fundamental difference between a liquid ocean and a magma ocean. The magma wants to escape; Water really doesn’t do it. ” The liquid rock is less dense than the solid rock, so it wants to get up and burst quickly; The new study suggests that it does not linger with depth long enough inside the IO to form a massive and interconnected ocean. But liquid water is unusually more dense than its solid icy shape. “Liquid water is heavy, so it gathers in an ocean,” said Sori.

“I think this is the large -scale message of this document,” added Sori. Heating of the tides could find it difficult to create magma oceans. But on the frozen moons, it can easily make aqueous oceans due to the oddly low ice density. And this suggests that life has a multitude of potentially habitable environments throughout the solar system to call home.

Child of the Hell poster

The revelation of which Io lacks his shallow Magma Ocean underlines how little we know little things about the heating of the tides. “We have never really understood where inside Io, the coat bases, how this coat bases the surface,” said Kleer.

Our own moon also shows proof of primitive tide heating. Its oldest crystals were formed 4.51 billion years ago of the flow of molten material which was unleashed by a Giant impact event. But many lunar crystals seem to have been formed from a second reservoir of melted rock 4.35 billion years ago. Where does the magma come from later?

Nimmo and the co -authors offered an idea a paper Published in Nature in December: Perhaps the Moon of the Earth was like IO. The moon was significantly closer to the earth at the time, and the gravitational fields of the earth and the sun fought for control. On a certain threshold, when the gravitational influence of the two was roughly equal, the moon could have temporarily adopted an elliptical orbit and to be heated by the tide by the gravitational petrin of the earth. Its interior could have remembered, causing a surprise secondary development of volcanism.

But exactly where inside the moon, its tidal heating was concentrated – and therefore, where everything that the melting happened – is not clear.

Perhaps if IO can be understood, our moon can also, as well as several of the other satellites in our solar system with hidden tide engines. For the moment, this volcanic orb remains examined. “Io is a complicated beast,” said Davies. “The more we observe it, the more sophisticated the data and analyzes, the more confusing it becomes.”

Original story reprinted with the permission of How many magazinean independent editorial publication of Simons Foundation whose mission is to improve the understanding of the public of science by covering the developments of research and the trends of mathematics and physical sciences and life.