Production of Liquid Water by Impacts onto Icy Bodies

Details Production of Liquid Water by Impacts onto Icy Bodies Production of Liquid Water by Impacts onto Icy Bodies

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.3806k&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #38.06

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Melting of H2O ice during planetary impact events is a widespread phenomenon. As relatively low shock pressures are required to melt ice, large volumes of liquid may be produced. Depending on the size of the event, the liquid water may persist for long time scales. However, knowledge of the volume and spatial distribution of liquid water produced from an impact is necessary to draw conclusions about the longevity of the liquid water. Using the new 5-phase model equation of state for H2O (Stewart & Senft, MAPS, 2008) in CTH hydrocode simulations, we calculate the volume of ice that is melted for a wide range of impact conditions and derive scaling laws as a function of initial temperature, projectile size and impact velocity. We also consider impacts onto mixtures of ice and silicates. Using new experimental results for how energy is partitioned in a shocked ice-quartz mixture (Kraus et al., EPSL, submitted), we determine the maximum amount of liquid water produced in ice-silicate mixtures. Interestingly, there is a range of silicate to ice ratios that will result in a greater amount of liquid water production than if the same impact occurred onto a body of pure ice.
Support was provided by the DOE NNSA SSGF program under grant No. DE-FC52-08NA28752 and NASA under grant No. NNX06AC13G

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Production of Liquid Water by Impacts onto Icy Bodies does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Production of Liquid Water by Impacts onto Icy Bodies, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Production of Liquid Water by Impacts onto Icy Bodies will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1333217