NASA scientists have revealed the secrets and techniques of essentially the most volcanic physique in our photo voltaic system, in line with new analysis. The discovery solves a 44-year-old thriller of why, and the way, Jupiter’s violent moon, Io, grew to become so volcanically energetic.
Io is just barely bigger than our moon, with a diameter of two,237 miles (3,600 kilometers), and has an estimated 400 volcanoes, in line with NASA. Plumes from these volcanoes’ eruptions can stretch for miles out into area, and may even be seen from Earth when seen by massive telescopes.
This dramatic volcanism was first recognized in 1979 by scientist Linda Morabito, then at NASA’s Jet Propulsion-Laboratory, in a picture taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft.
“Since Morabito’s discovery, planetary scientists have puzzled how the volcanoes have been fed from the lava beneath the floor,” Scott Bolton, principal investigator for NASA’s Juno spacecraft from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, mentioned in a assertion. “Was there a shallow ocean of white-hot magma fueling the volcanoes, or was their supply extra localized?”
The Juno spacecraft, which was launched in 2011 to check Jupiter and the moons that orbit it, made two very shut flybys of Io in 2023 and 2024, approaching inside 930 miles (1,500 km) of its effervescent floor. “We knew information from Juno’s two very shut flybys might give us some insights on how this tortured moon really labored,” Bolton mentioned.
During these approaches, the spacecraft collected information that allowed scientists to measure Io’s gravity.
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Io orbits near Jupiter at a median distance of 262,000 miles (422,000 km), finishing its elliptical cycle as soon as each 42.5 hours. Due to the form of its orbit, the moon’s distance from its dad or mum planet varies, and so too does Jupiter’s gravitational pull. This means the moon is constantly being squeezed and launched like a stress ball in a course of referred to as tidal flexing.
“This fixed flexing creates immense vitality [in the form of heat,] which accurately melts parts of Io’s inside,” Bolton mentioned.
In the previous, it was thought that, due to this flexing, Io’s inside could be residence to a big magma ocean, stretching beneath its whole floor like a layer of tiramisu. However, analysis led by Bolton, printed Dec. 12 within the journal Nature, means that this isn’t the case.
“If Io has a worldwide magma ocean, we knew the signature of its tidal deformation can be a lot bigger than a extra inflexible, principally strong inside,” Bolton mentioned.
Instead, the staff’s information steered that Jupiter’s volcanic moon has a principally strong inside, with every of Io’s volcanoes having their very own underground chamber of roiling magma.
“Juno’s discovery that tidal forces don’t at all times create world magma oceans does greater than immediate us to rethink what we find out about Io’s inside,” examine lead writer Ryan Park, a Juno co-investigator and supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mentioned within the assertion.
The examine findings have implications for Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as effectively exoplanets past our photo voltaic system. “Our new findings present a chance to rethink what we find out about planetary formation and evolution,” Park mentioned.
