Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.6508p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #65.08
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
Near-IR spectral observations appear to show that crystalline water ice is common in the outer solar system. This is unexpected, as amorphous solid water (ASW) is also stable beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and produced when crystalline ice is exposed to radiation. The annealing of surface ASW to crystalline ice through the impact heat of interplanetary micrometeorites may be sufficient to explain the observed crystalline spectra of many icy satellites. Through numerical modeling of both impact thermal diffusion and gravitational focusing, we have found that interplanetary dust particle impacts may provide a sufficient kinetic energy flux to effectively anneal ASW on geologically fast timescales. We estimated that this rate is sufficient to compete with ice amorphization by ultraviolet and ion irradiation for most of the saturnian and uranian satellites. This effect is strongly amplified by the proximity of the satellite to its planet, due to both gravitational focusing and the satellite's planetocentric velocity. Though these calculations were made for pure ice and assume spherical diffusion, we further show that icy-rocky mixtures and cylindrical diffusion both result in higher annealing rates. Impact annealing due to planetary dust (i.e. the E ring) was not effective. In addition, this model can be applied to explaining the crystallinity of Kuiper Belt object (KBO) surfaces. Though they have lower heliocentric velocities and no giant planet to gravitationally focus dust, the dust fluxes in the Kuiper Belt may be large enough to anneal ASW. Micrometeorite annealing could therefore explain that unexpectedly high crystallinity of objects not expected to have active surface cryovolcanism, like Haumea. If the method is effective on KBOs, it may in turn be used to as a probe of Kuiper Belt dust as function of distance from the Sun.
Cook James
Desch Steve
Porter Simon
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