Related papers: Enceladus's Tidal Heating
Spacecraft observations suggest that the plumes of Saturn's moon Enceladus draw water from a subsurface ocean, but the sustainability of conduits linking ocean and surface is not understood. Observations show sustained (though tidally…
Recent planetary data and geophysical modelling suggest that hydrothermal activity is ongoing under the ice crust of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. According to these models, hydrothermal flow in the porous, rocky core of the satellite…
Previous studies that have considered the ocean circulation on Enceladus have generally assumed the salinity to be Earth-like. However, according to observations and geochemical constraints, the salinity of Enceladus' ocean is likely to be…
Enceladus's gravity and shape have been explained in terms of a thick isostatic ice shell floating on a global ocean, in contradiction of the thin shell implied by librations. Here we propose a new isostatic model minimizing crustal…
Observational data suggest that the ice shell on Enceladus is thicker at the equator than at the pole, indicating an equator-to-pole ice flow. If the ice shell is in an equilibrium state, the mass transport of the ice flow must be balanced…
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…
Could tidal dissipation within Enceladus' subsurface ocean account for the observed heat flow? Earthlike models of dynamical tides give no definitive answer because they neglect the influence of the crust. I propose here the first model of…
The ice shell on Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, exhibits strong asymmetry between the northern and southern hemispheres, with all known geysers concentrated over the south pole, even though the expected pattern of tidal-rotational…
Saturn's diffuse E ring consists of many tiny (micron and sub-micron) grains of water ice distributed between the orbits of Mimas and Titan. Various gravitational and non-gravitational forces perturb these particles' orbits, causing the…
We develop a long-term 1-D evolution model for icy satellites that couples multiple processes: water migration and differentiation, geochemical reactions and silicate phase transitions, compaction by self-gravity, and ablation. The model…
On icy worlds, the ice shell and subsurface ocean form a coupled system -- heat and salinity flux from the ice shell induced by the ice thickness gradient drives circulation in the ocean, and in turn, the heat transport by ocean circulation…
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…
The detection of outgassing water vapor from Enceladus is one of the great breakthroughs of the Cassini mission. The fate of this water once ionized has been widely studied; here we investigate the effects of purely neutral-neutral…
The geologically active south pole of Enceladus generates a plume of micron-sized particles, which likely form Saturn's tenuous E-ring extending from the orbit of Mimas to Titan. Interactions between these particles and satellites have been…
Dissipation of ocean potential energy is proposed by Tyler (2020) as a new mechanism leading to possible high-power states for Enceladus. I show here that this process actually results from viscoelastic dissipation within the crust. For…
Layered semi-convection could operate in giant planets, potentially explaining the constraints on the heavy elements distribution in Jupiter deduced recently from Juno observations, and contributing to Saturn's luminosity excess or the…
Internal dissipation in a tidally perturbed librating body differs from the tidal dissipation in a steadily spinning rotator. First, libration changes the spectral distribution of tidal damping across the tidal modes, as compared to the…
Over the south pole of Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, geysers eject water into space in a striped pattern, making Enceladus one of the most attractive destinations in the search for extraterrestrial life. We explore the ocean dynamics…
Tidal friction in exoplanet systems, driven by orbits that allow for durable nonzero eccentricities at short heliocentric periods, can generate internal heating far in excess of the conditions observed in our own solar system. Secular…
Recent Juno observations have suggested that the heavy elements in Jupiter could be diluted throughout a large fraction of its gaseous envelope, providing a stabilising compositional gradient over an extended region of the planet. This…