WEBVTT - The Burning Mountains of Io, Part 3 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:15.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:16.120 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.800 And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.120 third and final part in our series on Jupiter's moon Io, 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:28.000 the innermost and third largest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.879 and the most volcanic body in our Solar system. Years ago, 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:35.120 we did a multi part series on the moons of 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:37.519 Jupiter at large, but this time we wanted to come 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.280 back and do a deeper focus on Io, in particular 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:46.879 to explore its own peculiar Hadian prodigies, because it really is, 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.160 as I've said in the previous two parts, I think, 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.200 probably one of the most dramatic places in our Solar system, 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.680 certainly beyond Earth. Now, if you haven't heard the previous 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.120 two parts yet, I would recommend you go back and 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.639 listen listen to those in order. But to briefly recap, 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.520 we started off by talking in detail about some really 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.800 eerie and thrilling images of the surface of Io, mostly 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.759 based on data collected in twenty twenty three and twenty 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:17.160 twenty four by NASA's Juno mission. These images highlighted a 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.880 lot of the really enigmatic features of the Moon's topography, 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:26.720 including these gargantuan thorn like mountains and volcanic highlands, huge 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.840 fields blanketed and yellow sulfurous frost, Vast lakes of molten 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:37.080 lava constantly overturning with waves, giant lava flows spreading in 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:41.039 some cases hundreds of kilometers, forever resurfacing the Moon and 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:44.720 erasing all the scars of its history. We also talked 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.800 about the physical ironies of the conditions on Io, including 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.960 the fact that it is at once deep cold due 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:56.559 to its extremely thin sulfur dioxide atmospheres inability to trap heat, 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.120 doesn't really have much of an atmosphere, can't trap heat 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.480 there of course, in places it is unimaginably hot, due 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:07.640 of course, two volcanic eruptions, according to a volcanologist we 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:12.399 discussed in Part one, a single one of the Moon's volcanoes, 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.239 the lava lake known as Loki Ptera, which we did 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:16.800 do a little focus on. That was the one that 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:19.640 has a big island in the middle of it actually 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.480 has a number of islands, but one big old island 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.280 in the middle which shall not be named. That one 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:31.480 volcano emits more heat than all of Earth's volcanoes combined, 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.919 which is a pretty startling fact. We also talked in 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:39.399 previous parts a bit very briefly about the historical exploration 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.200 of Io, including Carl Sagan's account of the discoveries made 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.400 by the Voyager one probe in nineteen seventy nine. We 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.639 talked about the character from Greek myth that provides Io 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.720 its name, about how the story of Io was told 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.200 by Avid and other ancient authors, and how in ancient 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.400 times the character of Io was said to overlap or 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:04.400 interact with other religious figures, such as the Egyptian goddess Isis. 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:08.560 In Part two, we discussed when and how Io tends 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.920 to pop up in science fiction storytelling. There's sometimes what 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.959 at least feels like a dearth of Io stories, and 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.160 then we talked about a mystery regarding images of so 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:24.280 called ridges on the Moon's surface, which paradoxically look extremely 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.000 similar to wind driven sand dunes on Earth and Mars. 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:33.079 This is paradoxical because of the tenuous, barely there atmosphere 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:35.240 of Io, which wouldn't seem to be thick enough to 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:38.680 support the winds needed to make dunes. And then we 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.320 got into a paper that offered a likely solution to 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.400 this mystery. Finally, in the last episode, we talked about 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:51.760 the possibility of life on Io being a blasted, cursed, irradiated, waterless, sulfurous, 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.720 freezing cold, searing hot kind of nightmare ball, a place 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.680 from the video game Doom I would not seem to 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.440 be a good place to look for science of extraterrestrial life, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.280 but if it were to exist there, we talked about 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:09.440 some astrobiology speculation on where and how that life might persist. 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.240 And now we are back today to round out the discussion, 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:14.200 talk about a few more things. 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:16.200 That's right, all new things quite true. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.720 In fact. To kick things off today, I want to 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.120 talk about a pretty new research paper I think it 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.760 was just published a couple of months ago in the 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.880 journal Nature, I believe in December twenty twenty four, which 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:32.839 addresses a longstanding mystery about the interior of We've talked 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.280 about the mysteries of its surface, but now we're going 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.640 to talk about mysteries of what lies inside. So this 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.920 paper was by park at All and it's called Io's 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:46.919 title response precludes a shallow magma ocean. Again published in 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:51.440 Nature twenty twenty four, So a bit of context about this. 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:56.040 For the past four decades or so, there has been 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:02.080 a question about what powered the vulcan canic corruptions on Io, 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.279 and it was long suspected for a number of reasons, 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.960 but not confirmed, that underneath the surface of the Moon 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:14.760 there lay a vast planetary magma ocean, sometimes thought to 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:19.040 be maybe roughly fifty kilometers deep below the surface, a 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.760 vast ocean of liquid magma stretching around the planet, which 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.520 found release points at each of Io's roughly four hundred 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.840 active volcanoes. So this was long suspected by some researchers 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.000 to be the case. But this new paper published in 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.160 Nature in twenty twenty four has a group of researchers 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:44.840 who took information gathered by the NASA Juno mission and 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.599 used it to argue that the magma ocean hypothesis cannot 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.880 be correct and instead each volcano is probably powered by 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.839 its own distinct magma chamber. And I'm going to try 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.760 to explain how we get there. So a reminder, going 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.200 back to part one of this series, volcanic activity on 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:07.640 Io was not directly detected until the discovery of a 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:12.440 volcanic plume by NASA JPL scientists Linda Morabito in nineteen 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:17.440 seventy nine. The image was found in actually navigational images 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:22.480 created by the Voyager one spacecraft. Volcanism had been hypothesized 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.400 by the astrophysicist Stanton Peel beforehand, but this was the 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.600 first time direct evidence was identified. But ever since the 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.839 erupting volcanoes were first discovered, there has been this mystery 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.480 about what's inside the Moon to feed the eruptions. And 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.960 I wanted to read a quote here by Juno principal 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:45.000 investigator Scott Bolton, who is quoted in a NASA press 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:49.560 release about this new paper. Bolton summarizes it saying, quote, 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:54.400 since Morabido's discovery, planetary scientists have wondered how the volcanoes 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.080 were fed from the lava underneath the surface. Was there 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.960 a shallow ocean of white hot magma fueling the volcanoes 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.719 or was their source more localized. We knew data from 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.120 Juno's two very close flybys could give us some insights 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:13.960 on how this tortured moon actually worked. So how did 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:16.600 they investigate this? Well? I thought this was pretty cool. 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.480 So the Juno spacecraft did flybys of Io in December 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:24.720 twenty twenty three and February twenty twenty four, and during 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:30.239 those close passes, Juno interfaced with an Earth based tool 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.920 called NASA's Deep Space Network, which is a network of 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.800 three equidistant ground based radio antennas on Earth. There's one 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:41.240 in California, there's one in Australia, and one in Spain. 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:45.160 And the ideas with this equidistant spacing of these antennas, 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.360 they always at least one of them can maintain contact 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.560 with something in space. You never have it going dark. Together, 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:57.560 these instruments were able to acquire high precision Doppler readings 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:03.440 to detect minute changes in Juno's acceleration, which was in 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.520 turn able to tell us things about the gravity of 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.600 iob the gravitational influence of IO, because it was primarily 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:15.320 Io's gravity that would have been affecting Juno's acceleration at 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:19.240 these moments. So essentially, researchers were looking for how the 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:24.480 gravitational field of IO changes during its tidal stretching cycle, 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.200 more on that than just a minute, because that would 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.520 help us know how rigid the Moon is. A more 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.959 rigid IO would be consistent with a more solid interior, 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.640 but a more flexible IO would indicate a liquid magma 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:43.280 ocean underneath. Now on that sort of flexing and stretching cycle, 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:48.280 IO is in a very close orbit around Jupiter. The 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.719 average distance between the planet and the Moon is four 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.600 hundred and twenty two thousand kilometers over the course of 0:08:55.640 --> 0:09:00.000 its roughly forty two point five hour orbits. Now that is, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.280 this is not much further than the distance between the 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.679 Earth and the Moon, which is about three hundred and 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:09.920 eighty four thousand kilometers, except think of how big Jupiter is. 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.199 In the words of Scott Bolton, the Juno principal investigator, 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.840 IO is orbiting a monster, and this has many different effects. 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.440 We've talked about some of them already, but a big 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:27.000 one is a gravitational effect. Gravity follows the inverse square law, 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.679 meaning that the attractive force between two objects in space 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:35.880 is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:38.840 And another way of thinking about that is, as you 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.240 get closer to a planet, the force of gravity asserted 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.600 on you rapidly becomes greater. So get a little bit 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.720 closer to Jupiter and you get pulled harder toward it. 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.760 A strange thing about IO is that in addition to 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.480 being very close in orbit around a very massive planet, 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:01.000 the orbit of this moon is also not circular. It 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:04.439 is slightly elliptical, meaning that if you look down from 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.960 above the orbital plane, you're going to see the orbit 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.240 being slightly longer in one direction than another. It's a 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.119 little bit more oval shaped than a circle. This elliptical 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:20.840 orbit is actually because of regular gravitational influence by two 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.400 more of the Galilean moons, Europa and Ganymede. These moons 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.360 are in what's called an orbital resonance with Io, which 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:32.280 means that their orbits are sort of like small integer 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.959 multiples of the orbits of iOS. They frequently line up 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.760 in the same place as Io as they're going around 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.480 the planet, and the fact that they continually line up 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.600 in the same direction over and over means that they 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.920 sort of stretch Io's orbit in that one direction. So 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:53.560 the elliptical orbit of Io means that the distance between 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:58.480 Io and Jupiter keeps changing, and so as the distance 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:02.640 keeps changing, the string of Jupiter's gravitational pull on Io 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:06.800 keeps changing. Two. And this really affects the Moon because 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.360 it's always the case that the side of the Moon 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:15.320 facing Jupiter experiences a stronger pull than the side that's 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.280 farther away. The nearer side is pulled harder than the 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:22.680 far side, But because of the constantly changing distance between 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.960 Io and Jupiter, the difference between the pull on the 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:28.160 far side and the near side of the planet keeps 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:32.800 changing too, And this manifests as what planetary geologists might 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:38.240 call tidal flexing. It's a squeezing, stretching of the solid 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.840 material that the Moon is made of in the fluctuating 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.199 gravitational field. You can kind of just imagine this by 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:47.560 like holding a rubber ball in your hand and just 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.520 like squeezing it over and over again. It's a flexing 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:55.120 of the material that the moon is made of. Now, Rob, 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:57.320 did you ever do the thing in like the school 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.600 cafeteria when you were younger, where you you get one 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:04.240 of those, you know, cheap metal forks, cafeteria forks, and 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:06.520 you bend it back and forth a bunch of times, 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:08.160 real fast until it gets hot. 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.080 No, I never did this. I didn't even know this 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:14.360 was a thing. I mean, I mean, physically, I understand 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:16.040 why it's possible, but I didn't know it was a 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:17.000 thing that kids do. 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:19.800 I guess it was the thing I did. I don't 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.120 know sure is that are most forks supposed to bend 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:27.120 like that? You're using your hands right, not your mind? Yes, 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.920 just hands, just hands. This this has got to be 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:34.400 possible only with like real bottom shelf cutlery. But yeah, 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:36.760 so you know, you flex a piece of piece of 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.000 metal back and forth a bunch of times. Usually what 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.440 you will find is that the metal heats up. The 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:46.720 flexing causes a frictional force within the material that excites 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:49.160 the atoms, and it makes the metal hot or at 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:53.160 least warm. Similar principle here, The flexing of the Moon 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.680 by the by the changing gravitational field as it gets 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.560 closer and farther away from Jupiter causes frictional heat of 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.920 the inside of the Moon, and that heat is immense. 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.400 It is so immense that it melts parts of the 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:11.400 Moon's interior and this massive build up of internal heat 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:15.079 energy is released to the surface through volcanic eruptions. But 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:17.280 this brings us back to the question we started with, 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:22.600 what is the nature of the subsurface magma source to 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:26.920 read from the paper in Nature quote For decades it 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.160 has been speculated that this extreme tidal heating may be 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:35.360 sufficient to melt a substantial fraction of Io's interior, plausibly 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:41.080 forming a global subsurface magma ocean. Many worlds are believed 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.679 to have had magma oceans early in their evolution, notably 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:48.920 the early Moon referring to Earth's moon there, notably the 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.880 early Moon, which is thought to have had a shallow 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:56.200 magma ocean in the first one hundred million years, caused 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:00.240 by the giant impact that birthed the body, which that 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:02.400 is not new information in this paper, but that on 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.319 its own is just a fascinating fact to consider it, 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:08.520 you know. So there is the main theory of the 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:11.440 origin of the current Earth and Moon is the giant 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.839 impact hypothesis. So the idea is that roughly four and 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:17.760 a half billion years ago, during the formation of the 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:21.680 Solar System, when the you know, the planets were just accreting, 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:26.560 there was a collision between the early proto Earth and 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:30.400 some kind of roughly Mars sized object, and this collision 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:35.080 caused a fracturing that eventually ended up causing the separation 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:37.840 of the material that became the Earth and became the Moon. 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.400 So that's the common origin of the Earth we have now, 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.800 and where the Moon came from. And so the idea 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.040 here is that for the first one hundred million years 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:50.760 or so after that, the Moon probably had a global 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:56.680 shallow magma ocean surrounded by liquid by molten rock. Wow 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:01.640 would have been cool to see. Perhaps not physically cool, 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.160 but anyway. So the authors cite that as an example 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:10.600 of a global shallow magma ocean surrounding a planetary body 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.440 or a moon, and then the quote goes on to 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:18.360 say Io's extreme volcanism strongly suggests the existence of at 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.240 least a partially molten interior. Whether the interior contains a 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.840 shallow global magma ocean has been an outstanding question since 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:31.760 the discovery of Io's volcanism. Now, beyond these theoretical models, 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:36.080 were there any recent experiments that would have provided support 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.080 for the idea of a global magma ocean. I was 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.080 looking into this and it appears yes, there were some 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:47.480 good reasons from findings that pointed in this direction. Apparently, 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:51.320 the Galileo mission took some magnetic measurements that were thought 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:55.880 to be consistent with a shallow, shallow reserve of global magma, 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.440 and I also wanted to flag another argument for the 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.000 magma ocean, and I came across in a space dot 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:07.280 Com article by Keith Cooper, which pointed out that previous 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:12.200 data collected by the JUNO mission had actually enabled researchers 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:16.960 to create the first global map of Io's volcanic activity. 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.320 Rob actually pasted a picture of this global map in 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:21.920 the outline for you to look at here. And so 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:25.240 it's got little color coded polka dots of different energy 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:29.400 levels of volcanic corruptions all over Io's surface. The authors 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.400 here assembled this map based on near infrared signatures of 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:38.040 iOS polar regions. In particular, data collected by previous missions 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:40.640 had already done some of this mapping, I think, but 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.040 had left us with an incomplete picture of volcanic activity 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.320 near the poles. And I was reading a space dot 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:53.240 com article that quoted study author Ashley Davies, a volcanologist 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:57.520 at NASA, JPL and Calteche, Pasadena, and Davies explained their 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.840 findings by saying, quote before this anal it was thought 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:05.280 that Iowe's polar volcanoes were fewer and more powerful than 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:09.760 at lower latitudes. We show that polar volcanoes are about 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:13.479 as prevalent as at lower latitudes, and actually with lower 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:18.959 emitted power. Suggesting smaller eruptions. And another thing the researchers 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.920 found is that these findings were interpreted by computer modeling 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.720 to lend support to the hypothesis of a global subsurface 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:29.280 magma ocean. So it seemed like this looked good for 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:30.600 the for the magma ocean. 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.760 Did they consider connecting these dots and seeing if it 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.679 made a pentagram or not, because that's that's generally what 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.200 you do in detective movies. 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:42.040 It really does look like people should be putting tax 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.000 in and putting string between them, doesn't it. 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:47.480 Yeah, yeah, see it all lines up with that unnamed island. 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.439 Yeah, well, that unnamed island is I'm sure going to 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.400 be right around one of the yellow dots here. In fact, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:54.800 I think I see where Loki Ptera is, and yes, 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:56.560 it is, in fact one of the It is one 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:01.240 of the hottest types of dots. Any pentangle, I'm not 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:02.080 really seeing it. 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.000 If you want them bad enough, they will manifest. 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.560 But anyway, coming back to the new Jono experiment park 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.560 it all from twenty twenty four, so the authors use 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:14.200 the Doppler data from the JUNO flybys and the Deep 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:18.080 Space Network radio telescopes, as well as data previously collected 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.200 by the Galileo mission to try to look at the 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:25.880 tidal deformation of Io. And again, remember they're looking for 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:29.119 if it's more if it's stretching more, if it seems 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:33.480 more easily deformed, that probably means liquid magma ocean underneath. 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.359 And if it's more rigid, that probably means that it 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.520 is more solid underneath. And they concluded, based on their 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.879 findings that Io could not have a global magma ocean 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:47.240 underneath its surface. Instead, the Moon must be mostly solid, 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:52.760 with individual magma chambers driving the hundreds of volcanoes. The 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.679 authors of the paper right quote our results indicate that 0:18:55.760 --> 0:19:00.400 tidal forces do not universally create global magma oceans, which 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.960 may be prevented from forming owing to rapid melt ascent 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:08.720 intrusion and eruption. So even strong tidal heating, such as 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.800 that expected on several known exoplanets and super earths, may 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:16.520 not guarantee the formation of magma oceans on moons or 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.960 planetary bodies. And Rob, I've got a little artist's rendition 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.520 for you to look at here. This is an artist's 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.800 impression of the interior of Io informed by these new findings, 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:30.920 does not show a global magma ocean instead shows these 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:34.600 the pockets, these magma chambers that are leading up to 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.600 the volcanoes on the surface, some of these volcanoes being 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:40.800 connected to plumes that we see erupting far over the 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:44.600 surface of the planet. This has more the look of 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.479 you know, it's like when you see superheroes and movies 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:51.000 that like have the fire inside and you see their 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:53.520 skin kind of cracking and then the fire is ready 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.119 to come out. It looks like it's about to go 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:56.720 supermode exactly. 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:00.879 Yeah, yeah, these kind of yeah, these deep the I 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:03.520 want to describe them as veins because they don't really 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:07.159 have that kind of rooting pattern. But deep fissures, I 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:09.800 guess would be more glowing fissures would be the way 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:10.560 to describe them. 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:14.640 And so perhaps one reason Io doesn't have a magma 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.359 ocean would be all of its volcanoes. They may in 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.560 fact be dissipating the heat that would otherwise melt the mantle, 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.359 the author's write in their conclusion quote. On Earth, deep 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:29.920 melts can be denser than the surrounding mantle and thus 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:34.840 remain sequestered. In a basal magma ocean. On Io, pressures 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.960 are much lower, so mantle melts are expected to be 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:41.879 always less dense than the surrounding solid mantle. The melts 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.040 will tend to ascend, making maintenance of a deep magma 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:50.320 ocean dynamically problematic. Conversely, if the melts are dense, for example, 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:54.280 if sufficiently iron rich, although a deep magma ocean could 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.520 then form, it would be hard to explain how any 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.199 such melt would ascend and erupt. Thus, we conclude that 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.399 the volcanism scene on iosurface is not sourced from a 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.680 global magma ocean. So it seems like that interesting idea 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:12.439 is likely put to rest unless something causes us to 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:17.320 really reinterpret these results. But despite the magma reserves not 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:20.280 being part of a sort of global shared ocean in nature, 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:25.200 I still think that leaves the volcanoes and the plumes 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:27.959 and the eruptions and the lava lakes no less fascinating 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:28.760 and charismatic. 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:33.080 Yeah. Yeah, Plus, you know that if you miss that, 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:35.960 if you miss that vision of what iowe is, it's 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.879 probably out there somewhere else in the universe. So you 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:42.760 can just imagine that it's out there somewhere waiting for you. 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:44.440 Used to be present on our moon. 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.879 Yeah, yeah, it's somewhere else in time and space, and 0:21:49.960 --> 0:22:02.359 in time maybe a lot closer than you thought. Now. 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:05.800 One of the features of the illustration that you showed me, 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:10.960 and certainly listeners can find various images that either depict 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:15.199 this or are actual captures of this. One of the 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:18.840 distinguishing features that you often see with IO is that 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:23.399 of these plumes coming up from its surface volcanic eruption 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.720 that is ejecting material into space, and it is always 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:31.520 kind of weird to look at because it feels completely 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:35.159 out of scale, like we're not used to seeing. You know, 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:37.919 we've all seen images of volcanic eruptions, and yes they 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.480 can actually they can look quite alarming from orbit, but 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:44.720 this just looks These just look amazing because the Moon 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:48.159 in profile has this plume coming off of it, just 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:54.359 this ridiculously far reaching plume of volcanic eruption. And so 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:57.680 that's what I want to explore here in this next section, 0:22:57.720 --> 0:22:59.919 getting into like what exactly this is, what is it 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:05.960 mean for not only IO, but for the the basically 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.560 the entire orbital realm of Jupiter itself. 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:12.040 I totally agree with what you say about looking at 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:16.080 these plumes, that the plumes even in real. Direct images 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:19.560 taken from reality look fake. They look like they look 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:23.119 like art. The word photo can be misleading because the 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:25.960 instruments used to capture these images can be different in nature, 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.040 and it's not always just visual light. But but yeah, 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:32.000 like direct images of reality that we're looking at, but 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:34.760 they're that they look like a cartoon. 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.600 Yeah, yeah, like this is grotesque and ridiculous, But I'm 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:44.320 reminded of of pimples. You know, usually in profile, you 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:46.119 are not going to notice a pimple, And if a 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:49.280 pimple were to burst on a person, you wouldn't see 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:52.320 that in profile. You wouldn't see like the silhouette of 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:55.760 the eruption. And if you were to see that, well, 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:58.160 you would be watching like an Itchy and scratchy cartoon 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.600 or a SpongeBob cartoon or something. It be a cartoon 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:05.200 exaggeration of reality. And that's what the scale of these 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:06.199 things really looks like. 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:08.800 Yeah, that's right. We see plumes on io that are 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:12.000 like somebody with a three inch high pimple that when 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:14.680 you pop it, it squirts like six feet off their body. 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.760 Yes, so what's going on here? Well, you know, here 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:22.560 on Earth, we certainly have powerful volcanic eruptions as well. 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:26.119 We have in the past, and they occur periodically, and 0:24:26.160 --> 0:24:29.800 they will continue to occur. But we also have some 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:32.639 other things going for us that you don't find on 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:36.600 IO and you don't find everywhere else in our solar system. 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:40.560 We have a robust atmosphere, We have resulting wind resistance 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:46.040 and sufficient gravity to place the necessary escape velocity beyond 0:24:46.359 --> 0:24:50.280