Io may have an ocean of magma or a coronary heart of fiery steel within the underworld

chicago — An entire ocean of liquid magma, or a heart of fiery solid metal, could lurk in the subterranean world of Io.

The surface of Jupiter’s deepest moon is covered in hot lava lakes and is surrounded by hundreds of active volcanosome erupt lava tens of kilometers high (Serial Number: 8/6/14). Over the years, the moon Restless, Mesmerizing Hellscapes attracted the attention of many planetary scientists (Serial Number: 5/3/22).

Now, researchers are delving into Io’s hellish interior to explain what causes spectacular volcanism on the moon’s fiery surface. “It’s the most volcanically active place in the solar system,” said Samuel Howell, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, “but it’s not clear where that energy comes from. Come.”

Researchers generally agree that most of Io’s energy comes from the gravitational tug-of-war between its parent planet Jupiter and its sibling moon Europa. Those enormous forces tugged at Io’s rocky body, generating enormous frictional heat within it. But how this heat is stored and moved remains a mystery.

One explanation is that Io’s underworld may be inhabited by huge ocean of liquid magma, said David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at Caltech, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 15. While the exact size of the proposed molten sea remains uncertain, it would need to be relatively large, he said. “The magma ocean could be 100 kilometers thick.”

In 2011, researchers reported that Io’s mantle is unlikely to be completely solid. Magnetic measurements of Io by the Galileo spacecraft have shown that there must be a conductive layer inside the moon.A sort of Global subsurface layer containing lavathe scientists wrote, would fit the bill.

But the researchers couldn’t tell whether the layer consisted of a continuous sea of ​​magma or many small pieces of lava interspersed among the solid rock, resembling a soaked sponge.

Based on previous work, Stevenson and Caltech geophysicist Yoshinori Miyazaki calculated that the mixed layer of magma and solid rock beneath Io’s crust would be fundamentally incompatible with the heat they predict would occur in the moon’s interior. stable. The molten rock and the hard rock would split into separate layers, and the molten rock would merge into the subsurface sea, Stevenson said. “The final conclusion is that [that] Io has a magma ocean. “

But there are other possibilities. “A lot of the information is consistent with a large global conductive layer that could be a magma ocean,” Howell said. “But I wouldn’t say there is consensus on how to interpret the data.”

Instead, the truth may reside in Io’s mind, where A core made of solid metal may lurk, Howell reported at the Dec. 15 meeting.previous research has shown The core of I is rich in metalsHowell and his colleagues calculated that a metallic core as hard as solid ice and a rocky mantle as viscous as Earth could completely dissipate the large amounts of heat that Io is estimated to release. This will realize the energy release effect of the magma ocean.

Future measurements collected by NASA Ongoing Juno missions Two more future spacecraft — NASA’s Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s JUICE — may provide the data needed to determine whether any one or some combination of these hypotheses hold, Stevenson and Howell said. correct(Serial Number: 12/15/22). Until then, the mystery of what dwells in the dark depths of Io may have to remain in Purgatory.