English

Capillary processes in extraterrestrial contexts

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2024-05-01 v1 Geophysics

Abstract

The Earth is no longer the only known celestial body containing one or more liquid phases. The Cassini spacecraft has discovered seas of hydrocarbons at the surface of Titan, while a series of corroborating evidences argue in favour of the existence of an aqueous ocean beneath the icy crust of several moons. Capillarity embraces a family of physical processes occurring at the free surface of a liquid. These phenomena depend on the liquid properties and on the local planetary conditions. Capillarity may have important direct or indirect implications on the geoscientific and astrobiological points of view. In this paper, we discuss capillarity physics among solar system objects and expected consequences for planetary science.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.19131,
  title  = {Capillary processes in extraterrestrial contexts},
  author = {Daniel Cordier and Gerard Liger-Belair and David A. Bonhommeau and Thomas Seon and Thomas Appere and Nathalie Carrasco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.19131},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

This paper is accepted in "Journal of Geophysical Research: Planet". Data and softwares are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10391618

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:10:32.435Z