Death Star moon hides ocean inside, scientists say

Modeling the Herschel impact basin in pamper, in Moon smaller and inner Saturnprovide more evidence that this is a world with a liquid ocean inside.

And the striking structure of the pool, which resembles this Moon to ‘The Death Star’ from star Warssuch as the lack of tectonics in pamper they are supported by a thinning ice sheet and a geologically young ocean.

“In the Last Days of the Cassini Mission” POT a Saturnthe spacecraft detected a curious libration or wobble as it rotated pamperwhich often indicates a geologically active body capable of containing an internal ocean,” said Dr. Alyssa Roden of the Southwestern Research Institute (SwRI), a geophysicist in icy moons, especially those containing oceans, and in the evolution of giant planets. satellite systems.

She is the second author of a new paper on the subject published in Geophysical Research Letters. “pamper seemed an unlikely candidate, with its cratered icy surface scarred by a giant impact crater that makes a small Moon very similar to The Death Star from Star Wars. Yes pamper has an ocean, it represents a new class of small “invisible” ocean worlds, the surfaces of which do not betray the existence of the ocean.

Studies

Rodin worked with Purdue graduate student Adina Denton to better understand how a heavily cratered moon looks like pamper may have an inland ocean. Denton simulated the formation of the Hershel Impact Basin using iSALE-2D simulation software.

The models showed that the ice cap pamper during the impact that formed Herschel, it must have been at least 55 km thick. Instead, the observation pamper and models of its internal warming limit the current thickness of the ice sheet to less than 30 km if it currently has an ocean. These results imply that the real ocean is inside pamper it must have been warming and expanding since the pool formed. It is also possible that pamper was completely frozen both at the time of the Herschel strike and today. However, Denton found that including an inland ocean in the impact models helped determine the shape of the basin.

“We found that Herschel could not form in an ice sheet of its current thickness without destroying the ice sheet at the impact site,” explains Denton, who is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Arizona. “Yes pamper has an ocean, the ice sheet has thinned since Herschel formed, which could also explain the lack of faults in pamper. Yes pamper emergent oceanic world, this imposes important restrictions on the formation, evolution and habitability of all moon medians Saturn.”

“Although our results confirm the existence of a real ocean in pamperdifficult to reconcile orbital and geological characteristics Moon with our current knowledge of its thermal orbital evolution,” Roden says. — Assessing the state pamper What Moon the ocean would serve as a reference for models of its formation and evolution. This would help us better understand the rings Saturn and moon medium size, as well as the abundance of potentially habitable ocean satellites, especially Uranus. pamper This is an attractive target for further investigation” (Europa Press).

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