Computer Science
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007natur.447..289n&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 447, Issue 7142, pp. 289-291 (2007).
Computer Science
66
Scientific paper
Enceladus, a small icy satellite of Saturn, has active plumes jetting from localized fractures (`tiger stripes') within an area of high heat flux near the south pole. The plume characteristics and local high heat flux have been ascribed either to the presence of liquid water within a few tens of metres of the surface, or the decomposition of clathrates. Neither model addresses how delivery of internal heat to the near-surface is sustained. Here we show that the most likely explanation for the heat and vapour production is shear heating by tidally driven lateral (strike-slip) fault motion with displacement of ~0.5m over a tidal period. Vapour produced by this heating may escape as plumes through cracks reopened by the tidal stresses. The ice shell thickness needed to produce the observed heat flux is at least 5km. The tidal displacements required imply a Love number of h2>0.01, suggesting that the ice shell is decoupled from the silicate interior by a subsurface ocean. We predict that the tiger-stripe regions with highest relative temperatures will be the lower-latitude branch of Damascus, Cairo around 60°W longitude and Alexandria around 150°W longitude.
Mullen Mccall E.
Nimmo Francis
Pappalardo Robert T.
Spencer John Robert
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