Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufm.u12b..02s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #U12B-02
Physics
5430 Interiors (8147), 5455 Origin And Evolution, 6218 Jovian Satellites
Scientific paper
There are three kinds of planetary water-dominated oceans. The first kind is Earthlike, where the overlying atmosphere has modest optical depth. In addition to requiring sufficient water, such an ocean requires a rather narrow range of circumstances to exist (sometimes erroneously labeled "the habitable zone"). Early Mars, and early Io and Europa may have had this kind of ocean but it could be rare as a long-term stable state. The second kind of ocean is kept warm by a dense atmosphere. For example, an earth mass body that retains a kilobar hydrogen atmosphere in interstellar space can have an ocean maintained by radioactivity alone. Bodies such a Uranus and Neptune can be thought of as grossly exceeding the necessary conditions (i.e., their water component is actually too hot to produce a well-defined ocean). There is no reason to suppose that this second kind of ocean is rare; it may well be the most common kind and a common occurrence throughout the universe. I will discuss the difficulties of detecting these bodies. A solid layer of ice caps the third kind of ocean. All large satellites are thought likely to have such an ocean; in the cases of Europa and Callisto the best evidence is the magnetic fields observed by the Galileo spacecraft and attributed to the induction response of a salty water layer. These water layers can be sustained by radioactivity alone in bodies the size of about Callisto or larger, while tidal heating is probably important in Europa. The antifreeze properties of ammonia may extend the domain of ocean worlds to considerably smaller bodies, perhaps including Triton and Pluto. In summary, oceans are probably common and diverse.
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