Related papers: Non-synchronous rotation on Europa driven by ocean…
A number of synchronous moons are thought to harbor water oceans beneath their outer ice shells. A subsurface ocean frictionally decouples the shell from the interior. This has led to proposals that a weak tidal or atmospheric torque might…
Europa is an icy ocean world, differentiated into a floating ice shell and solid interior, separated by a global ocean. The classical spin-orbit coupling problem considers a satellite as a single rigid body, but in the case of Europa, the…
The deep (~100 km) ocean of Europa, Jupiter's moon, covered by a thick icy shell, is one of the most probable places in the solar system to find extraterrestrial life. Yet, its ocean dynamics and its interaction with the ice cover have…
Europa's icy surface likely overlies an ocean, but the ice thickness is not known. Here we model the temporal growth of a Europan shell of pure ice subject to varying ice-ocean heat fluxes, ice rheologies, and internal heating rates. Both…
Jupiter's moon Europa has a thin icy crust which is decoupled from the mantle by a subsurface ocean. The crust thus responds to tidal forcing as a deformed membrane, cold at the top and near melting point at the bottom. In this paper I…
Europa's surface reflectance exhibits a pronounced hemispheric dichotomy, which is hypothesized to form due to enhanced irradiation of the trailing hemisphere by energetic particles entrained in the jovian magnetosphere. We propose that…
Jupiter's icy moons are believed to host subsurface liquid oceans, and among them, Europa stands out as one of the most promising candidates for extraterrestrial life. Yet, the processes driving oceanic flows beneath its ice shell, as well…
Thermal tides can torque the atmosphere of hot Jupiters into asynchronous rotation, while these planets are usually assumed to be locked into spin-orbit synchronization with their host star. In this work, our goal is to characterize the…
Tidal torques can alter the spins of tidally interacting stars and planets, usually over shorter timescales than the tidal damping of orbital separations or eccentricities. Simple tidal models predict that, in eccentric binary or planetary…
The circulation in Europa's ocean determines the degree of thermal, mechanical and chemical coupling between the ice shell and the silicate mantle. Using global direct numerical simulations, we investigate the effect of heterogeneous tidal…
This paper presents one analytical tidal theory for a viscoelastic multi-layered body with an arbitrary number of homogeneous layers. Starting with the static equilibrium figure, modified to include tide and differential rotation, and using…
Europa's interior is expected to be divided into the metallic core, rocky mantle and hydrosphere based on the moment of inertia factor estimated from gravity field measurements. Specifically, the thickness of the outermost water layer is…
Aims: We aim to determine whether Jupiter's obliquity is bound to remain exceptionally small in the Solar System, or if it could grow in the future and reach values comparable to those of the other giant planets. Methods: The spin axis of…
I present results from the first global hydrodynamical simulations of the elliptical instability in a tidally deformed gaseous planet (or star) with a free surface. The elliptical instability is potentially important for tidal evolution of…
During recent decades, data from space missions have provided strong evidence of deep liquid oceans underneath a thin outer icy crust on several moons of Jupiter, particularly Europa. But these observations have also raised many unanswered…
Much of the geologic activity preserved on Europa's icy surface has been attributed to tidal deformation, mainly due to Europa's eccentric orbit. Although the surface is geologically young (30 - 80 Myr), there is little information as to…
The spectroscopic variability of Arcturus hints at cyclic activity cycle and differential rotation. This could provide a test of current theoretical models of solar and stellar dynamos. To examine the applicability of current models of the…
Ocean worlds are prevalent in the solar system. Focusing on Enceladus, Titan, Europa, and Ganymede, I use rotating convection theory and numerical simulations to predict ocean currents and the potential for ice-ocean coupling. When the…
Hot Jupiters are typically assumed to be synchronously rotating, from tidal locking. Their thermally-driven atmospheric winds experience Lorentz drag on the planetary magnetic field anchored at depth. We find that the magnetic torque does…
In order to characterize the global circulation of the subsurface ocean of Jovian and Saturnian moons, we analyze the properties of 21 three-dimensional simulations of Boussinesq thermal convection in a rapidly rotating spherical shell.…