By staring into the hellish landscape of Jupiter’s moon Io — probably the most volcanically lively location within the solar system — Cornell University astronomers have been in a position to study a fundamental process in planetary formation and evolution: tidal heating.
“Tidal heating plays a vital role within the heating and orbital evolution of celestial bodies,” said Alex Hayes, professor of astronomy. “It provides the heat vital to form and sustain subsurface oceans within the moons around giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn.”
“Studying the inhospitable landscape of Io’s volcanoes actually inspires science to look for all times,” said lead creator Madeline Pettine, a doctoral student in astronomy.
By examining flyby data from the NASA spacecraft Juno, the astronomers found that Io has lively volcanoes at its poles which will help to manage tidal heating — which causes friction — in its magma interior.
The research published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“The gravity from Jupiter is incredibly strong,” Pettine said. “Considering the gravitational interactions with the massive planet’s other moons, Io finally ends up getting bullied, continuously stretched and scrunched up. With that tidal deformation, it creates numerous internal heat throughout the moon.”
Pettine found a surprising variety of lively volcanoes at Io’s poles, versus the more-common equatorial regions. The inside liquid water oceans within the icy moons could also be kept liquefied by tidal heating, Pettine said.
Within the north, a cluster of 4 volcanoes — Asis, Zal, Tonatiuh, one unnamed and an independent one named Loki — were highly lively and chronic with an extended history of space mission and ground-based observations. A southern group, the volcanoes Kanehekili, Uta and Laki-Oi demonstrated strong activity.
The long-lived quartet of northern volcanoes concurrently became brilliant and appeared to respond to at least one one other. “All of them got brilliant after which dim at a comparable pace,” Pettine said. “It’s interesting to see volcanoes and seeing how they respond to one another.
This research was funded by NASA’s Recent Frontiers Data Evaluation Program and by the Recent York Space Grant.
