We May Have Found A ‘Dune Moon’ Around Jupiter Say Scientists
Jupiter’s lava-spewing moon Io—photographed by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in April—has been revealed as a possible “dune Moon”.
In a new paper published in the the journal Nature Communications Jupiter’s moon Io’s mysterious and very large meandering ridges were analyzed. They are of immense interest to planetary geologists because sand dunes are thought to occur when sand is piled up by wind. But Io’s low-density atmosphere means any winds would be far too weak to cause dunes.
“Our studies point to the possibility of Io as a new ‘dune world,’” said first author George McDonald, a postdoctoral researcher in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department ay Rutgers University, New Brunswick. “We have proposed, and quantitatively tested, a mechanism by which sand grains can move, and in turn dunes could be forming there.”
The scientists used images from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1989 through 2003. Its data helped produce the first detailed maps of Jupiter’s moons.
“This work tells us that the environments in which dunes are found are considerably more varied than the classical, endless desert landscapes on parts of Earth or on the fictional planet Arrakis in ‘Dune,’” said McDonald.
This global view of Jupiter’s moon, Io, was obtained during the tenth orbit of Jupiter by NASA’s … [+]
The second-smallest of the four large so-called Galilean Moons—the others being Ganymede, Europa and Callisto—Io is the most volcanic world in the solar system. The eruptions on Io are many orders of magnitude bigger than anything that occurs on Earth.
Its surface is thought to be a mix of flowing lava and solidified lava flows with frequent sulfur dioxide snow. It’s thought that its surface is therefore constantly being renewed, but the research simulated the forces on a single grain of basalt or frost and found that it could be possible for them to form into large ripples and dunes.
So the ridges that are visible on Io—complete with crests on a similar scale to those found on both Earth and Mars—could, in fact, be sand dunes.
Io is also suspected to have a magma ocean hidden beneath its surface.
Juno will image Io again from a distance during a flyby in December 2022, but is scheduled to get to within just 900 miles/1,500 km of Io in both December 2023 and February 2024.
Wishing you clear skies wide eyes.
