Powering the Galilean Satellites with Moon-Moon Tides

Abstract

There is compelling evidence for subsurface water oceans among the three outer Galilean satellites, and evidence for an internal magma ocean in the innermost moon, Io. Tidal forces from Jupiter periodically deform these bodies, causing heating and deformation that, if measured, can probe their interior structures. In addition to Jupiter-raised tides, each moon also raises tides on the others. We investigate moon-moon tides for the first time in the Galilean moons, and show that they can cause significant heating through the excitation of high-frequency resonant tidal waves in their subsurface oceans. The heating occurs both in the crust and ocean, and can exceed that of other tidal sources and radiogenic decay if the ocean is inviscid enough. The resulting tidal deformation can be used to constrain subsurface ocean thickness. Our understanding of the thermal-orbital evolution and habitability of the Jovian system may be fundamentally altered as a result.

References in corpus (3)

• Spatial patterns of tidal heating
• Thin elastic shells with variable thickness for lithospheric flexure of one-plate planets
• Tides between the TRAPPIST-1 planets

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Building the Galilean moons system via pebble accretion and migration: A primordial resonant chain
• Decoupled and coupled moons' ephemerides estimation strategies -- Application to the JUICE mission
• Dynamical history of the Galilean satellites for a fast migration of Callisto
• Compositional layering in Io driven by magmatic segregation and volcanism
• Combining astrometry and JUICE -- Europa Clipper radio science to improve the ephemerides of the Galilean moons