Other
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.0309z&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #3.09
Other
Scientific paper
Ithaca Chasma on Tethys implies an early elevated heat flux, far greater than that due to radioactive decay [Giese et al. 2007, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L21203]. The most likely alternative is an episode of tidal heating, which requires the satellite's orbital eccentricity to be in the range 0.001-0.02 [Chen and Nimmo 2008, Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L19203]. The eccentricity damping timescale resulting from tidal interaction, however, is so short that the inferred eccentricity could not have been primordial. We investigated an orbital resonance between Tethys and Dione as a source for eccentricity excitation, as proposed by Chen and Nimmo [2008], and also various mechanisms that might bring the satellites out of the resonance.
Our numerical study shows that trapping into the 3:2 mean-motion resonance between Tethys and Dione allows Tethys' orbital eccentricity to grow to at least 0.005-0.01. Higher eccentricity may be achieved if the satellites can exit or avoid the e-Dione resonance and enter the e-Tethys one, but it is hard to break the e-Dione resonance trapping which would occur if the two orbits start out of resonance. We studied two mechanisms with the potential to break the e-Dione resonance: a later resonance between Rhea and Dione, and a giant impact. The 5:3 Rhea-Dione resonance does cause some temporary chaotic evolution of the satellites' orbits, but it is not strong enough to break the resonance. For a giant impact to break the resonance, a 700-km-diameter crater would have been created based on the crater size scaling given in Zahnle et al.[2003, Icarus 163, 263], which is much bigger than the 400 km Odysseus basin on Tethys. We will investigate other possible mechanisms and present our findings in the conference.
Nimmo Francis
Zhang Ke
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