Arizona: Jupiter's Moons Could Be Warming Each Other

[bystander]

Jupiter's Moons Could Be Warming Each Other
University of Arizona, Tucson | 2020 Sep 10

The four largest moons of Jupiter in order of distance from Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Credit: NASA

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Jupiter's moons are hot.

Well, hotter than they should be, for being so far from the sun. In a process called tidal heating, gravitational tugs from Jupiter's moons and the planet itself stretch and squish the moons enough to warm them. As a result, some of the icy moons contain interiors warm enough to host oceans of liquid water, and in the case of the rocky moon Io, tidal heating melts rock into magma.

Researchers previously believed that the gas giant Jupiter was responsible for most of the tidal heating associated with the liquid interiors of the moons, but a new study ... found that moon-moon interactions may be more responsible for the heating than Jupiter alone. ...

Understanding how the moons influence each other is important because it can shed light on the evolution of the moon system as a whole. Jupiter has nearly 80 moons, the four largest of which are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. ...

Powering the Galilean Satellites with Moon‐Moon Tides ~ Hamish C.F.C. Hay, Antony Trinh, Isamu Matsuyama

• Geophysical Research Letters 47(15):088317 (16 Aug 2020) DOI: 10.1029/2020GL088317
• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2008.02825 > 06 Aug 2020

[Forrest White]

Understanding how the moons affect each other is important. Ultimately, this may shed light on the evolution of the lunar system as a whole. Jupiter has about 80 satellites, the four largest of which are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.