Other
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.1802n&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #18.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.443
Other
Scientific paper
There are at least 37 objects in this solar system with masses greater than 10^20 kg, two thirds of which have surfaces made primarily of water ice. The handful of icy bodies studied by spacecraft have revealed an enormous diversity of bizarre and unanticipated features, from geysers on Triton and Enceladus, to the peculiar shapes of Iapetus and 2003 EL61.
I will discuss three aspects of icy body geodynamics. First, just as on silicate bodies, topographic profiles can be used to look for flexure and thus to infer the elastic thickness Te of the near-surface. For thin ice shells (e.g. Europa), estimates of Te place constraints on the shell thickness. For Ganymede the Te values provide estimates of the heat flux evolution through time which are consistent with models of that body's orbital evolution.
Second, tidal deformation can drive strike-slip motion and shear heating. On Europa and Triton, this shear heating may be responsible for the double ridges observed at the surface. On Enceladus, shear heating is a plausible cause of the elevated temperatures and vapour plumes seen in the south polar region. Although no such plumes were imaged on Europa, vapour production due to shear heating may also operate on this body.
Last, rotating planetary bodies will reorient if their moments of inertia are altered. Reorientation of synchronous satellites is more complicated than that of planets because of the combined tidal and rotational bulges. Enceladus may have undergone reorientation as a result of diapirism, resulting in the "tiger stripes" region moving towards the south pole. Large impact basins on other icy bodies are also likely to have caused reorientation unless basin relaxation times are very rapid. Although for a given basin slow rotators (such as Pluto) undergo more reorientation, the resulting stresses are actually larger for fast rotators.
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