The tidal history of Iapetus. Spin dynamics in the light of a refined dissipation model

Details The tidal history of Iapetus. Spin dynamics in the light of a refined dissipation model The tidal history of Iapetus. Spin dynamics in the light of a refined dissipation model

Oct 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011epsc.conf.1859e&link_type=abstract

EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011, held 2-7 October 2011 in Nantes, France. http://meetings.copernicus.org/epsc-dps2011, p.1859

Physics

Scientific paper

We study the tidal history of an icy moon, basing our approach on a dissipation model, which combines viscoelasticity with anelasticity, and takes into account the microphysics of attenuation. We apply this approach to Iapetus, the most remote large icy moon in the Saturnian system. Estimates of Iapetus' despinning timescales, provided by different authors, differ by several orders of magnitude. One reason for these differences is the choice of the dissipation model used for computing the spin evolution. As laboratory data on viscoelastic properties of planetary ices are sparse, many studies relied on dissipation models that turned out to be inconsistent with experiment. A pure water ice composition, generally assumed in the previous studies of the kind, yields despinning times of the order of 3.7 Gy for most initial conditions. We demonstrate that, through accounting for the complexity of the material (like second-phase impurities), one arrives at despinning times as short as 0.9 Gy. A more exact estimate will remain unavailable until we learn more about the influence of impurities on ice dissipation. By including the triaxial-shape-caused torque, we encounter a chaotic behaviour at the final stage of despinning, with the possibility of entrapment in the intermediate resonances. The duration of these entrapments turns out to be sensitive to the dissipation model. No long entrapments have been found for Iapetus described with our laboratorybased dissipation model.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The tidal history of Iapetus. Spin dynamics in the light of a refined dissipation model 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 The tidal history of Iapetus. Spin dynamics in the light of a refined dissipation model, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The tidal history of Iapetus. Spin dynamics in the light of a refined dissipation model will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1488695