WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Burning Mountains of Io, Part 3 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:10.280 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Today is Saturday, 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:15.160 Valentine's Day apparently, and we have a vault episode for you. 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.320 This is going to be The Burning Mountains of Io, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.160 Part three. It originally published two thirteen, twenty twenty five. 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:25.280 It is part three of three. Let's jump right in. 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.440 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:40.720 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:41.840 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:44.440 And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:48.800 third and final part in our series on Jupiter's moon Io, 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.680 the innermost and third largest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:58.560 and the most volcanic body in our solar system. Years ago, 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:00.760 we did a multi part series on the moons of 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.200 Jupiter at large, but this time we wanted to come 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.959 back and do a deeper focus on Io, in particular 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:12.560 to explore its own peculiar Hadean prodigies, because it really is, 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:15.839 as I've said in the previous two parts, I think 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.880 probably one of the most dramatic places in our Solar system, 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.360 certainly beyond Earth. Now, if you haven't heard the previous 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.120 two parts yet, I would recommend you go back and listen. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.480 Listen to those in order, but to briefly recap, we 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:31.759 started off by talking in detail about some really eerie 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.839 and thrilling images of the surface of Io, mostly based 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.839 on data collected in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:43.080 four by NASA's Juno mission. These images highlighted a lot 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:47.400 of the really enigmatic features of the Moon's topography, including 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:52.920 these gargantuan thorn like mountains and volcanic highlands, huge fields 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:58.080 blanketed and yellow sulfurous frost, Vast lakes of molten lava 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:02.760 constantly overturning with ways waves, giant lava flows spreading in 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.680 some cases hundreds of kilometers, forever resurfacing the Moon and 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.400 erasing all the scars of its history. We also talked 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.440 about the physical ironies of the conditions on Io, including 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.639 the fact that it is at once deep cold due 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:22.240 to its extremely thin sulfur dioxide atmospheres inability to trap heat. 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.040 Doesn't really have much of an atmosphere, can't trap heat there, 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:29.160 but of course in places it is unimaginably hot due 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:33.280 of course, two volcanic eruptions. According to a volcanologist we 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:38.080 discussed in Part one a single one of the Moon's volcanoes, 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.880 the lava lake known as Loki Petera, which we did 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:42.480 do a little focus on, that was the one that 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.000 has has a big island in the middle of it 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:47.760 actually has a number of islands, but one big old 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.400 island in the middle, which which shall not be named. 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.760 That one volcano emits more heat than all of Earth's 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.839 volcanoes combined, which is a pretty startling fact. We also 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.840 talked in previous parts a bit very briefly about the 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:08.080 historical exploration of Io, including Carl Sagan's account of the 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.520 discoveries made by the voyager one Probe in nineteen seventy nine. 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.040 We talked about the character from Greek myth that provides 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.080 Io its name, about how the story of Io was 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.440 told by Avid and other ancient authors, and how in 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.720 ancient times the character of Io was said to overlap 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:29.079 or interact with other religious figures, such as the Egyptian 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:33.480 goddess Isis. In Part two, we discussed when and how 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.200 Io tends to pop up in science fiction storytelling. There's 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.840 sometimes what at least feels like a dearth of Io stories, 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.640 and then we talked about a mystery regarding images of 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:49.080 so called ridges on the Moon's surface, which paradoxically look 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:53.680 extremely similar to wind driven sand dunes on Earth and Mars. 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:58.760 This is paradoxical because of the tenuous, barely their atmosphere 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:00.920 of Io, which wouldn't see to be thick enough to 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:04.360 support the winds needed to make dunes. And then we 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.000 got into a paper that offered a likely solution to 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.080 this mystery. Finally, in the last episode, we talked about 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:17.440 the possibility of life on Io Io being a blasted, cursed, irradiated, waterless, sulfurous, 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:21.400 freezing cold, searing hot kind of nightmare ball, a place 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.359 from the video game Doom I would not seem to 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.120 be a good place to look for signs of extraterrestrial life, 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.960 but if it were to exist there, we talked about 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:34.839 some astrobiology speculation on where and how that life might persist. 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:37.920 And now we are back today to round out the discussion, 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:40.560 talk about a few more things that's right, all new 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.920 things quite true in fact. To kick things off today, 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:46.480 I want to talk about a pretty new research paper. 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:48.160 I think it was just published a couple of months 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.040 ago in the journal Nature, I believe in December twenty 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:57.640 twenty four. Which addresses a longstanding mystery about the interior 0:04:57.720 --> 0:04:59.919 of Io. We've talked about the mysteries of its surface, 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:02.200 but now we're going to talk about mysteries of what 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:06.120 lies inside. So this paper was by park at All 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:11.200 and it's called Io's Tidle Response Precludes a shallow magma Ocean, 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.960 again published in Nature twenty twenty four, So a bit 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.960 of context about this. For the past four decades or so, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:26.000 there has been a question about what powered the volcanic 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:30.080 eruptions on Io, and it was long suspected for a 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:34.120 number of reasons, but not confirmed, that underneath the surface 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:39.200 of the Moon there lay a vast planetary magma ocean, 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.640 sometimes thought to be maybe roughly fifty kilometers deep below 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:48.240 the surface, a vast ocean of liquid magma stretching around 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.039 the planet, which found release points at each of Io's 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:56.600 roughly four hundred active volcanoes. So this was long suspected 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:00.720 by some researchers to be the case. But this new paper, 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.960 published in Nature in twenty twenty four has a group 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:09.599 of researchers who took information gathered by the NASA Juno 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:12.960 mission and used it to argue that the magma ocean 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:17.880 hypothesis cannot be correct, and instead each volcano is probably 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:22.160 powered by its own distinct magma chamber, and I'm going 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:25.320 to try to explain how we get there. So a reminder, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.760 going back to part one of this series, volcanic activity 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:33.240 on Io was not directly detected until the discovery of 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:37.600 a volcanic plume by NASA JPL scientist Linda Morabito in 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:42.640 nineteen seventy nine. The image was found in actually navigational 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:47.000 images created by the Voyager one spacecraft. Volcanism had been 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.960 hypothesized by the astrophysicist Stanton Peel beforehand, but this was 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:56.200 the first time direct evidence was identified. But ever since 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.040 the erupting volcanoes were first discovered, there has been this 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.600 mystery about like what's inside the moon to feed the eruptions? 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.080 And I wanted to read a quote here by JUNO 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:10.360 principal investigator Scott Bolton, who is quoted in a NASA 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:15.240 press release about this new paper. Bolton summarizes it saying, quote, 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:19.360 since Mora Beido's discovery, planetary scientists have wondered how the 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:23.520 volcanoes were fed from the lava underneath the surface. Was 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.600 there a shallow ocean of white hot magma fueling the volcanoes, 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.360 or was their source more localized. We knew data from 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.800 Juno's two very close flybys could give us some insights 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:39.640 on how this tortured moon actually worked. So how did 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:42.280 they investigate this? Well? I thought this was pretty cool. 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:46.160 So the Juno spacecraft did flybys of Io in December 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:50.400 twenty twenty three and February twenty twenty four, and during 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:55.920 those close passes, Juno interfaced with an Earth based tool 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.560 called NASA's Deep Space Network, which is a network of 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.480 three equidistant ground based radio antennas on Earth. There's one 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.920 in California, there's one in Australia, and one in Spain. 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:10.840 And the ideas with this equidistant spacing of these antennas, 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:14.960 they always at least one of them can maintain contact 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:18.239 with something in space. You never have it going dark. Together, 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:23.200 these instruments were able to acquire high precision Doppler readings 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:29.120 to detect minute changes in Juno's acceleration, which was in 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:33.480 turn able to tell us things about the gravity of Io, 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:37.240 but the gravitational influence of Io, because it was primarily 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:41.000 Io's gravity that would have been affecting Juno's acceleration at 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.920 these moments. So essentially researchers were looking for how the 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:50.160 gravitational field of IO changes during its tidal stretching cycle. 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:52.920 More on that than just a minute, because that would 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.199 help us know how rigid the Moon is. A more 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.600 rigid IO would be consistent with a more solid interior, 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.319 but a more flexible IO would indicate a liquid magma 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:08.959 ocean underneath. Now on that sort of flexing and stretching cycle, 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.920 IO is in a very close orbit around Jupiter. The 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.400 average distance between the planet and the Moon is four 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.280 hundred and twenty two thousand kilometers over the course of 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:25.560 its roughly forty two point five hour orbits. Now, that 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.320 is not much further than the distance between the Earth 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:31.600 and the Moon, which is about three hundred and eighty 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:35.600 four thousand kilometers, except think of how big Jupiter is. 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.480 In the words of Scott Bolton, the junoprincipal investigator IO 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.480 is orbiting a monster and this has many different effects. 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.120 We've talked about some of them already, but a big 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:52.680 one is a gravitational effect. Gravity follows the inverse square law, 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.320 meaning that the attractive force between two objects in space 0:09:56.920 --> 0:10:01.880 is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:04.520 and another way of thinking about that is, as you 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.920 get closer to a planet, the force of gravity asserted 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.280 on you rapidly becomes greater. So get a little bit 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.400 closer to Jupiter and you get pulled harder toward it. 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.400 A strange thing about Io is that, in addition to 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.160 being very close in orbit around a very massive planet, 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:26.719 the orbit of this moon is also not circular. It 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.079 is slightly elliptical, meaning that if you look down from 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.640 above the orbital plane, you're going to see the orbit 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:36.920 being slightly longer in one direction than another. It's a 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.800 little bit more oval shaped than a circle. This elliptical 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:46.520 orbit is actually because of regular gravitational influence by two 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.079 more of the Galilean moons, Europa and Ganymede. These moons 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:54.079 are in what's called an orbital resonance with Io, which 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.960 means that their orbits are sort of like small integer 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:01.640 multiples of the orbits of iOS. They frequently line up 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.360 in the same place as Io as they're going around 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:08.160 the planet, and the fact that they continually line up 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.320 in the same direction over and over means that they 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:15.600 sort of stretch Io's orbit in that one direction. So 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.240 the elliptical orbit of Io means that the distance between 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:24.120 Io and Jupiter keeps changing, And so as the distance 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:28.320 keeps changing, the strength of Jupiter's gravitational pull on Io 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:29.280 keeps changing. 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:29.560 Two. 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:33.360 And this really affects the Moon because it's always the 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:38.640 case that the side of the Moon facing Jupiter experiences 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:42.000 a stronger pull than the side that's farther away. The 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.560 nearer side is pulled harder than the far side. But 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.200 because of the constantly changing distance between Io and Jupiter, 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.280 the difference between the pull on the far side and 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:55.480 the near side of the planet keeps changing too. And 0:11:55.520 --> 0:12:00.200 this manifests as what planetary geologists might call tidal flexing. 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:04.960 It's a squeezing, stretching of the solid material that the 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:09.200 Moon is made of in the fluctuating gravitational field. You 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:11.440 can kind of just imagine this by by like holding 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.160 a rubber ball in your hand and just like squeezing 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.199 it over and over again. It's a it's a flexing 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.800 of the material that the moon is made of. Now, Rob, 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:22.960 did you ever do the thing in like the school 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.560 cafeteria when you were younger where you get one of those, 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.480 you know, cheap metal forks, cafeteria forks, and you bend 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:32.840 it back and forth a bunch of times, real fast, 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:33.800 until it gets hot. 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:36.760 No, I never did this. I didn't even know this 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.040 was a thing. I mean, I mean, physically, I understand 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:41.679 why it's possible, but I didn't know it was a 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:42.679 thing that kids do. 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:45.480 I guess it was the thing I did. I don't 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:48.800 know sure, is that are most forks supposed to bend 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:49.360 like that? 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:51.920 You're using your hands right, not your mind? 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.480 Yes, just hands, just hands. This this has got to 0:12:55.520 --> 0:13:00.000 be possible only with like real bottom shelf cutlery. But yeah, 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:02.920 so you know, you flex a piece of metal back 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.000 and forth a bunch of times. Usually what you will 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.800 find is that the metal heats up. The flexing causes 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:13.120 a frictional force within the material that excites the atoms, 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.480 and it makes the metal hot or at least warm. 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:20.040 Similar principle here. The flexing of the Moon by the 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.440 changing gravitational field as it gets closer and farther away 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.520 from Jupiter causes frictional heating of the inside of the Moon, 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.000 and that heat is immense. It is so immense that 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:35.679 it melts parts of the Moon's interior, and this massive 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.440 build up of internal heat energy is released to the 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.800 surface through volcanic eruptions. But this brings us back to 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.920 the question we started with, what is the nature of 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:50.079 the subsurface magma source? To read from the paper in 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:53.920 Nature quote for decades, it has been speculated that this 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.920 extreme tidal heating may be sufficient to melt a substantial 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:04.800 fraction of Io's interior, plausibly forming a global subsurface magma ocean. 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.559 Many worlds are believed to have had magma oceans early 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:13.000 in their evolution, notably the early Moon referring to Earth's 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:16.400 moon there, notably the early Moon which is thought to 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.680 have had a shallow magma ocean in the first one 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:24.040 hundred million years, caused by the giant impact that birthed 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.640 the body, which that is not new information in this paper, 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.480 but that on its own is just a fascinating fact 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.200 to consider it, you know. So there is the main 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.440 theory of the origin of the current Earth and Moon 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:39.560 is the giant impact hypothesis. So the idea is that 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.360 roughly four and a half billion years ago, during the 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.800 formation of the Solar System, when the you know, the 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:50.320 planets were just accreting. There was a collision between the 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:54.800 early proto Earth and some kind of roughly Mars sized object, 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:59.040 and this collision caused a fracturing that eventually ended up 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.240 causing the the separation of the material that became the 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.800 Earth and became the Moon. So that's the common origin 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:07.880 of the Earth we have now and where the Moon 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.200 came from. And so the idea here is that for 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:13.240 the first one hundred million years or so after that, 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:19.920 the Moon probably had a global shallow magma ocean surrounded 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:24.520 by liquid by molten rockow would have been cool to see, 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:29.800 perhaps not physically cool, but anyway. So the authors cite 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.840 that as an example of a global shallow magma ocean 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:37.720 surrounding a planetary body or a moon, and then the 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.600 quote goes on to say Io's extreme volcanism strongly suggests 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:46.680 the existence of at least a partially molten interior. Whether 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.000 the interior contains a shallow global magma ocean has been 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:55.120 an outstanding question since the discovery of Io's volcanism. Now, 0:15:55.200 --> 0:16:00.400 beyond these theoretical models, were there any recent experiments that 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:03.120 would have provided support for the idea of a global 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:07.040 magma ocean. I was looking into this, and it appears, yes, 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:11.040 there were some good reasons, some findings that pointed in 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:16.360 this direction. Apparently, the Galileo mission took some magnetic measurements 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.760 that were thought to be consistent with a shallow, shallow 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.840 reserve of global magma. And I also wanted to flag 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.880 another argument for the magma ocean. I came across in 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:31.440 a space dot com article by Keith Cooper, which pointed 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:36.440 out that previous data collected by the junomission had actually 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:41.440 enabled researchers to create the first global map of Io's 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:45.560 volcanic activity. Rob actually pasted a picture of this global 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:47.400 map in the outline for you to look at here. 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:50.160 And so it's got little color coded polka dots of 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:54.120 different energy levels of volcanic eruptions all over Io's surface. 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.280 The authors here assembled this map based on near infrared 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:02.680 signatures of Io's poll polar regions. In particular, data collected 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.919 by previous missions had already done some of this mapping, 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.560 I think, but had left us with an incomplete picture 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.200 of volcanic activity near the poles. And I was reading 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:17.280 a space dot Com article that quoted study author Ashley Davies, 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:22.600 a volcanologist, at NASA, JPL and Caltech Pasadena, and Davies 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:26.080 explained their findings by saying, quote, before this analysis, it 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.840 was thought that Io's polar volcanoes were fewer and more 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:34.679 powerful than at lower latitudes. We showed that polar volcanoes 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.120 are about as prevalent as at lower latitudes, and actually 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:43.480 with lower emitted power, suggesting smaller eruptions. And another thing 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:47.600 the researchers found is that these findings were interpreted by 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.080 computer modeling to lend support to the hypothesis of a 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:54.520 global subsurface magma ocean. So it seemed like this looked 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:56.280 good for the magma ocean. 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.399 Did they consider connecting these dots and seeing if it 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:02.480 made a pentagram or not, because that's generally what you 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:04.879 do in detective movies. 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:07.720 It really does look like people should be putting tax 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:09.679 in and putting string between them, doesn't it. 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.160 Yeah? Yeah, say it all lines up with that unnamed island. 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.119 Yeah, well, that unnamed island is I'm sure going to 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.040 be right around one of the yellow dots here. In fact, 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:20.480 I think I see where Loki Ptera is, and yes 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:22.359 it is. In fact one of it is one of 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:27.240 the hottest types of dots, any pentangles, I'm not really 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:27.760 seeing it. 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.639 If you want them bad enough, they will manifest. 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.200 But anyway, coming back to the new Jono experiment, park 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:36.879 it all from twenty twenty four, So the author is 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.639 use the Doppler data from the JUNO flybys and the 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.240 Deep Space Network radio telescopes, as well as data previously 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:46.800 collected by the Galileo mission to try to look at 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:51.359 the tidal deformation of Io. And again remember they're looking 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.399 for if it's more, if it's stretching more, if it 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:59.160 seems more easily deformed, that probably means liquid magma ocean underneath. 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.040 And if it's more rigid, that probably means that it 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:05.200 is more solid underneath. And they concluded based on their 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.560 findings that Io could not have a global magma ocean 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:12.920 underneath its surface. Instead, the Moon must be mostly solid 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:18.439 with individual magma chambers driving the hundreds of volcanoes. The 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.800 authors of the Paperwright quote, our results indicate that tidal 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:26.240 forces do not universally create global magma oceans, which may 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.720 be prevented from forming owing to rapid melt ascent, intrusion 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:34.480 and eruption. So even strong tidal heating such as that 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:38.600 expected on several known exoplanets and super earths may not 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:43.440 guarantee the formation of magma oceans on moons or planetary bodies, 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.960 and rob I've got a little artist's rendition for you 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:49.840 to look at here. This is an artist's impression of 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.960 the interior of Io informed by these new findings. Does 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.360 not show a global magma ocean. Instead shows these the pockets, 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:01.040 these magma chambers that are leading up to the volcanoes 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:04.159 on the surface, some of these volcanoes being connected to 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.960 plumes that we see erupting far over the surface of 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:11.560 the planet. This has more the look of you know, 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.639 it's like when you see superheroes and movies that like 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.320 have the fire inside and you see their skin kind 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:19.680 of cracking and then the fire is ready to come out. 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.400 It looks like it's about to go supermode exactly. 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:26.760 Yeah. Yeah, these kind of yeah, these deep I want 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:29.280 to describe them as veins because they don't really have 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.000 that kind of rooting pattern. But deep fissures, I guess 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:35.600 would be more glowing fissures would be the way to 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:36.240 describe them. 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.280 And so perhaps one reason Io doesn't have a magma 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.040 ocean would be all of its volcanoes, they may in 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:48.240 fact be dissipating the heat that would otherwise melt the mantle. 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:52.000 The author's right in their conclusion quote. On Earth, deep 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.600 melts can be denser than the surrounding mantle and thus 0:20:55.680 --> 0:21:00.520 remain sequestered. In a basal magma ocean. On io, pressures 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:03.639 are much lower, so mantle melts are expected to be 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:07.560 always less dense than the surrounding solid mantle. The melts 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:10.720 will tend to ascend, making maintenance of a deep magma 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:16.000 ocean dynamically problematic. Conversely, if the melts are dense, for example, 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.960 if sufficiently iron rich, although a deep magma ocean could 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.200 then form, it would be hard to explain how any 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.879 such melt would ascend and erupt. Thus, we conclude that 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.080 the volcanism seen on iosurface is not sourced from a 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:34.360 global magma ocean. So it seems like that interesting idea 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:38.119 is likely put to rest unless something causes us to 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:42.960 really reinterpret these results. But despite the magma reserves not 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:45.959 being part of a sort of global shared ocean in nature, 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:50.880 I still think that leaves the volcanoes and the plumes, 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.639 and the eruptions and the lava lakes no less fascinating 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:54.440 and charismatic. 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:59.080 Yeah. Yeah. Plus, you know, if you miss that, if 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:02.000 you miss that vision of what IO is, it's probably 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:05.720 out there somewhere else in the universe. So you can 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:07.960 just imagine that it's out there somewhere waiting. 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.120 For you used to be present on our moon. 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:14.520 Yeah yeah, it's somewhere else in time and space and 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:28.000 in time, maybe a lot closer than you thought. Now. 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:31.480 One of the features of the illustration that you showed me, 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:36.679 and certainly listeners can find various images that either depict 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.840 this or are actual captures of this. One of the 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:44.520 distinguishing features that you often see with IO is that 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:48.639 of these plumes coming up from its surface, a volcanic 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:52.400 eruption that is ejecting material into space. And it is 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:56.080 always kind of weird to look at because it feels 0:22:56.640 --> 0:22:59.960 completely out of scale, like we're not used to seeing, 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:03.000 you know, we we've all seen images of volcanic eruptions, 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:05.920 and yes they can actually they can look quite alarming 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:09.560 from orbit, but this just looks These just look amazing 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.320 because the moon in profile has this plume coming off 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:18.600 of it, just this ridiculously far reaching plume of volcanic eruption, 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:22.679 and so that's what I want to explore here in 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:25.199 this next section, getting into like what exactly this is, 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:28.879 what does it mean for not only Io but for 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:35.240 the the basically the entire orbital realm of Jupiter itself. 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:37.719 I totally agree with what you say about looking at 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:41.760 these plumes, that the plumes, even in real direct images 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.240 taken from reality, look fake. They look like they look 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:48.800 like art. The word photo can be misleading because the 0:23:48.840 --> 0:23:51.639 instruments used to capture these images can be different. In nature, 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:54.840 it's not always just visual light. But but yeah, like 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:58.119 direct images of reality that we're looking at, but they're 0:23:58.520 --> 0:24:01.240 that they look like a yeah. 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:04.840 Yeah, like this is grotesque and ridiculous. But I'm reminded 0:24:04.840 --> 0:24:10.240 of pimples. You know, usually in profile, you are not 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:12.280 going to notice a pimple, And if a pimple were 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:15.680 to burst on a person, you wouldn't see that in profile. 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:19.439 You wouldn't see like the silhouette of the eruption. And 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:21.879 if you were to see that, well, you would be 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:24.600 watching like an itchy and scratchy cartoon or a SpongeBob 0:24:24.680 --> 0:24:28.399 cartoon or something. It would be a cartoon exaggeration of 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:31.400 reality and that's what the scale of these things really 0:24:31.440 --> 0:24:31.840 looks like. 0:24:32.160 --> 0:24:34.440 Yeah, that's right. We see plumes on Io that are 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:37.680 like somebody with a three inch high pimple that when 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:40.320 you pop it, it squirts like six feet off their body. 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:44.400 Yes, So what's going on here? Well, you know, here 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:48.200 on Earth we certainly have powerful volcanic eruptions as well, 0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:51.800 we have in the past, and they occur periodically and 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:55.479