Life on Jovian Moons

1. Life on Jovian Moons ASTR 1420 Lecture 14 Sections 9.1 & 9.2

2. Background… • Jovian planets themselves are unlikely habitable (Do you remember why?) • There are many moons orbiting these planets Jovian Moons. • Some jovian moons are potentially habitable (i.e., with liquid water). • If any one of them is habitable, this will greatly increase the chance of finding life in the Universe  many more jovian moons than jovian planets! • Let’s explore the mechanisms that make some jovian moons habitable.

3. Galileo, the inventor of telescope? • Did Galileo invent the telescope?

4. Discovering the Moons Soon after the news on the invention of telescope (1608), Galileo built his own one in 1609. • A page from Gelileo’s notebook written in 1610. ‘*’ are Galilean Moons! Wood strips, leather cover, objective & eyepiece lenses

5. Four Galilean Moons • On January 7th 1610, gazing at Jupiter, Galileo for the first time saw three moons of Jupiter • March 1610, Galileo published his results in a pamphlet called The Starry Messengerclaiming to have found four bodies moving around the giant planet “as Venus and Mercury around the Sun” • The four moons are now called the “Galilean Moons” - Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto • Currently, 63 moons were discovered orbiting Jupiter.

6. Galileo Galilei Galileo Telescope’s Objective Lens Galileo’s Finger On March 12, 1737 Galileo's remains were transferred to the church of Santa Croce. During the transfer, a devotee cut off Galileo's middle finger of his right hand. Today, Galileo's finger can be found on display in the Florence Institute and Museum of the History of Science. In 1677, lens mounted in an ebony frame to preserve it.

7. Discovering Moons • In 1656, Christiaan Huygens found the largest of Saturn’s moon – Titan. Huygens was also the first one to realize that the rings around Saturn do not touch the planet. • Cassini discovered four more moons of Saturn and showed that the ring of Saturn is not solid but instead of a collection of smaller rocks with a division (“Cassini division”) • Saturn has about 62 moons that we currently know of. HST near infrared light image

8. Jupiter has a ring, too! • The ring of Jupiter was discovered by Voyager 1 in March of 1979. • All four Jovian planets have rings!!

9. Ganymede and Titan are larger than Mercury Big2 + Io, Europa, Callisto, Triton, and our Moon are larger than Pluto smallest moons are about the size of a single mountain on Earth Moderate—large moons = miniature solar system spherical shape orbit in the same plane Orbit in the same direction to their planets Larger Moons

10. Schematics of Jovian Moons

11. Synchronous Rotation Near side of the Moon Far side of the Moon keeping the same face turned toward the Earth  the Moon completes exactly one rotation around its axis while it makes one orbit.

12. Synchronous Rotation • Nearly all jovian moons show synchronous rotation similar to our Moon. keep the same face turned toward their host planets  a moon completes exactly one rotation around its axis while it makes one orbit. • This is due to the same gravitational effect for the tides on Earth!

13. Tides on Earth • Tides on Earth are due to the differential gravity. Two tidal bulges  two high tides per day. • Why two bulges - one facing the Moon and the other opposite??

14. Tidal Friction • Moon’s orbital period = ~29 days • Earth’s rotation period = 1 day • Earth needs to rotate through two tidal bulges tidal friction! • Bulges are slightly pulled forward w.r.t. the line connecting Earth—Moon • Earth rotation gets slower  while Moon’s orbit gets larger (due to angular momentum conservation)

15. Tidal Friction  Synchronous Rotation • A larger tidal effect on the Moon than on the Planet • Adjusting rotational+orbital motions until “bulges” on the Moon always face to the Earth  Synchronous Rotation = “Tidal Locking”  the orbit will get ‘circularized’! • Tidal locking takes a short time (a few Myrs!) • All close-in objects to a larger object are tidally locked-in!

16. Tidal Friction  Synchronous Rotation When a satellite rotates too slowly A lot of words with ‘tidal’ adjective tidal locking tidal friction tidal heating … When a satellite rotates too rapidly

17. Io : Excellent Example of Tidal Heating • We know that Mercury and Moon had lost their internal energy… • 1979 Voyager 1 image of Io  active volcano!! But Io is smaller than Mercury! • Io is the most volcanically active place in the solar system. • If Io was completely “tidally locked”, there should be no more on-going heating because of no more tidal friction.

18. Due to its elliptical orbit, bulges are “misaligned” w.r.t. Jupiter! continuing tidal friction  increased internal heat! This internal heat is ~200 times more than Earth’s radioactive decay heat energy! But, tidal locking forces the orbit to be circular. ? Why Io’s orbit is elliptical still? Io : Continuing tidal heating…

19. Three inner most Galilean moons orbit Jupiter in a resonant way… Periodic alignments exert force on each other  smallest, shortest orbit got influenced the most  Io’s orbit is “distorted” to be elliptical! Initially, Io’s rotation was faster and it was located closer to Jupiter being tidally locked moving outward “meet” Europa and formed 1:2 resonance. Io+Europa being tidally locked together and moving outward They “meet” Ganymede and formed a resonance 1:2:4 Three of them are being moving outward to meet Callisto now… Orbital resonance

20. Io Europa Life on Galilean Moons? Ganymede Callisto

21. Too strong tidal heating  lack of water + extreme volcanism “Just right” tidal heating? ?? ??

22. Europa • Diameter – 3138 km (slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon) • Mass – less than Earth’s moon ( 1/125th of Earth’s mass, 65% of lunar mass) • Distance from Jupiter ~ 410,000 miles ( more than Earth - Moon), period=3.55 days • Has a very weak magnetic field • Has a very tenuous atmosphere – about 10-11 bar of mostly oxygen gas. • Surface is exceedingly smooth with highest elevations of a few hundred meters high. • The smooth surface has few craters but lots of cracks • Existence of water was already known from the ground-based spectrum of Europa

23. Europa • Galileo spacecraft measured gravitational field of Europa dense core + low density (~1 g/cm3; some sorts of water) material near the surface  central metallic core, thick rocky interior, 80-170km thick water layer, very cold (-150C) surface ice crust. Galileo orbiter image = very few impact craters  young surface (<~ 100 Myr)… Severe lacking of impact craters (only a few)  surface younger than 100 Myr resurfacing by occasional breakthrough of subsurface water

24. Surface feature of Europa • Chaotic terrain : “…a surface that looked as if it had been clawed by a tiger with talons several kilometers wide,…” • Closer views resolved each line into a groove flanked by ridges. • The larger channels travel thousands of kilometers along great circles without being diverted by the terrain. Whatever mechanism formed them must explain this tendency. • Repeated tidal cracking and compression of ice is too chaotic a process to explain

25. Fissures, cracks, domes, and pits…

26. Broken Ice and Refrozen Water • chaotic terrain (top left); an enigmatic dark spot nicknamed “The puddle” (bottom left); cycloidal ridges (right); and a shallow impact crater (bottom right).

27. Europa Craters • 140 km wide crater formed from a mountain size asteroid or comet… • similar to a gunshot glass structure…

28. Tracking Evolution E Youngest E D C B A Oldest C B D A

29. Enigma… • Conventional explantion If true, we should be able to find some single ridges. But, all Europan ridges are double ridges!

30. Ganymede • the largest moon in the solar system • surface of hard ice • old + young surfaces • grooves  tectonic stresses • underground ocean  weak induced magnetic field (+ its own) & surface salt. • lesser tidal heating. But with its larger size, enough to maintain an ocean • Very thick ice crust (>150km)  life less likely or harder to detect!

31. Ganymede • white craters and rims = impact exposes mantle ice • thin oxygen atmosphere, possible aurora at its poles • ghost craters = smoothed by ice flow very diversified surface with dark regions, valleys, mountains, evidence of past tectonic activity and lots of vertical relief

32. Callisto • pockmarked surface  as old as late heavy bombardment • dark powder at the low-lying areas  dusts after sublimated ice? • Gravity  a ball of mixed rock and ice + hundred km of water ice… • Undifferentiated interior  interior was never warm enough! • Induced magnetic field  subsurface salty ocean!!

33. Galilean Moons Too hot Maybe less likely Too cold, no? Io Europa Ganymede Callisto recent < 60 Myr 2-3 Gyr? 4+ Gyr

34. In summary… Important Concepts Important Terms Jovian Moons Synchronous rotation Tidal friction Tidal heating Orbital resonance Induced magnetic field • Tidal Effects • Evidence of subsurface ocean in Europa • Relative age-dating of surface features • Chapter/sections covered in this lecture : 9.1 & 9.2 • Life on Titan and other places in SS : next class!!