Simulations of the Herschel impact basin in mimes, the luna smaller and inner Saturnprovide more evidence that it is a world with a liquid ocean inside.
Both the striking structure of the basin, which resembles this luna to ‘star of death’ of Star Warssuch as the absence of tectonics in mimes they are supported by a thinning ice sheet and a geologically young ocean.
“In the final days of the Cassini mission of the NASA a Saturnthe spacecraft identified a curious libration, or wobble, in the rotation of mimeswhich often points to a geologically active body capable of harboring an internal ocean,” said Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Dr. Alyssa Rhoden, a specialist in the geophysics of icy satellites, particularly those containing oceans, and in the evolution of giant planet satellite systems.
She is the second author of a new article on the subject published in Geophysical Research Letters. “mimes seemed an unlikely candidate, with its heavily cratered, icy surface scarred by a giant impact crater that makes the small luna looks a lot like the Star of death from Star Wars. Yes mimes has an ocean, it represents a new class of small “stealth” ocean worlds, with surfaces that do not give away the existence of the ocean.”
The study
Rhoden worked with Purdue graduate student Adeene Denton to better understand how a heavily cratered moon like mimes could have an internal ocean. Denton modeled the formation of the Hershel impact basin using the iSALE-2D simulation software.
The models showed that the ice cap of mimes it must have been at least 55 km thick at the time of the Herschel-forming impact. Instead, the observations of mimes and models of its internal warming limit the current thickness of the ice sheet to less than 30 km, if it currently hosts an ocean. These results imply that an actual ocean within mimes it must have been heating and expanding since the basin formed. It is also possible that mimes was completely frozen both at the time of Herschel’s impact and today. However, Denton found that including an inland ocean in the impact models helped produce the shape of the basin.
“We found that Herschel could not have formed in an ice sheet of its present thickness without destroying the ice sheet at the impact site,” explains Denton, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona. “Yes mimes has an ocean today, the ice sheet has been thinning since the formation of Herschel, which could also explain the lack of fractures in mimes. And mimes is an emergent oceanic world, this imposes important constraints on the formation, evolution and habitability of all remedy medians of Saturn.”
“Although our results support the existence of an actual ocean in mimesit is difficult to reconcile the orbital and geological characteristics of the luna with our current knowledge of its thermal orbital evolution,” says Rhoden. “Assessing the condition of mimes as luna ocean would serve as a reference for models of its formation and evolution. This would help us better understand the rings of Saturn and the remedy medium-sized, as well as the prevalence of potentially habitable oceanic moons, especially Uranus. mimes It is an attractive target for further investigation.” (Europa Press)
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