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Research by Matsuyama and Colleagues Featured in Nature |
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Wednesday, 14 May 2008 |
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Research on Jupiter’s moon Europa, by Richard B. Roberts Fellow Isamu Matsuyama and colleagues, is featured in the 15 May issue of Nature. According to the team, curved features on Europa may indicate that its poles have wandered by almost 90º. This extreme shift points to the existence of an internal liquid ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust, which in turn suggests that Europa might be a possible habitat for extraterrestrial life.
Matsuyama and team used images from the Voyager, Galileo, and New Horizons spacecraft to map several large arc-shaped depressions that extend more than 500 km across Europa’s surface. The group then compared the pattern of the depressions with fractures that would result from stresses caused by a shift in Europa’s rotational axis, and they determined that the axis had shifted approximately 80º.
The shift in Europa’s rotational axis is referred to as “true polar wander,” a phenomenon that has been inferred to have occurred on Earth, Mars, and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Matsuyama commented, “Our study adds Europa to this list. It suggests that planetary bodies might be more prone to reorientation than we thought.”
For more information, see the CIW press release or the Nature paper. |
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