Jupiter’s Moon Callisto Probably Has an Ocean Under Its Surface
If there are the most interesting moon races in our solar system, Callisto will be the contender. Jupiter’s second largest moon has a greater impact on its surface than any other planetary body in the solar system, and there are also a lot of ice on the surface.
For decades. Researchers think they’re resting below Calisto’s spotted surface It is a liquid saltwater ocean that spans the entire moon. After carefully studying data from 30 years ago, researchers now have stronger evidence that such oceans do exist.
The team led by Corey J. Cochrane of NASA’s internal planetary and geophysical department is not looking for the ocean on Callisto. According to Cochrane, the team is in progress A different projectinvolving Triton, the moon that scans Neptune See if it has an underground ocean.
It was a challenge thanks to Triton’s intense ionosphere, which was the last layer before the space began. Since Callisto also has a strong ionosphere, the team decided to test the 30-year-old measurement method performed by the NASA Galileo task. The mission was launched in 1989 and scanned Jupiter and its moons between 1995 and 2003.
Cochrane told CNET in an email.
“We were able to remove this fuzzy plasma noise source from the measurements using previously developed plasma simulations so that signals from the ocean can be analyzed independently,” Cochrane said.
In short, Galileo’s readings were initially difficult to explain due to Callisto’s strong ionosphere. Once Cochrane and his team cleared the readings, they could consider the data, which strongly suggests that there are oceans beneath the appearance of the moon rock.
The ionosphere looks like the ocean
It took a long time to prove the existence of an underground ocean on Callisto, because the powerful ionosphere mimics such an ocean and you will get the reading.
“Nature’s fundamental laws of physics (Faraday’s law of magnetic induction) suggest that if you move a magnet relative to any conductive material (such as copper wire), you will create a current in that wire that is synchronized with the magnet’s motion,” Cochrane explains. “The current will then generate a secondary magnetic field (due to the movement of electrons in the wire) called the induced magnetic field, which exhibits the properties of the conductive material.”
This is also used with planetary institutions, Cochran said. A satellite or planet with enough internal heat can have a liquid saltwater ocean below the surface. These oceans are electrically conductive due to the salt in the water. Therefore, scientists can use magnetometers to measure induced magnetic fields that “preserve ocean properties.” In other words, the ocean can be found based on the magnetic fields they generate.
Because satellites like Jupiter’s Callisto and Neptune’s Triton have a very powerful ionosphere, the magnetometer’s readings become so noisy that it’s hard for researchers to figure out whether they’re looking at an ocean or random noise from the extra energy in the ionosphere. That’s why researchers have been trapped in the potential underground oceans of Callisto for decades.
Next step
Science doesn’t have to wait another 30 years to find evidence. NASA’s Europa Clippers Mission Launches Last year, Jupiter and its satellites should have arrived in 2030, while the European Space Agency’s Juice Task It should arrive in 2031. It is almost certain that both tasks will provide Callisto with more research data.
As far as the information they will collect, Cochrane tells us that it is not necessarily a different data. Instead, this is more data.
“Proving the existence of Callisto ocean from the new measurements depends only on the fact that there are more measurements to be analyzed,” Cochrane said. “For every flight that takes place in each task, the magnetometer captures only a small snapshot of the magnetic field environment.”
Cochrane said data from European Clippers and Juice Tasks will help “fill loopholes in Galileo’s mission” in the hope that researchers will eventually prove whether there is an ocean on Callisto. Additional data will also help researchers estimate the thickness of Callisto’s ocean layer, as well as the thickness of the ice shell on top of it.
Can Carristo have a life?
NASA and the European Space Agency will not send the mission to Jupiter without reason. One is: Europa’s Hidden Water is the Leader For the aliens.
“Europa’s oceans may support life because we know it has the key elements that support it, water, essential chemical elements and energy (e.g., heat sources from the inside) take up enough time in a time period to evolve,” Cochrane said. “The Europa Clippers are actually a habitable task (not to be confused with life detection), which will provide better data to help us better answer this question. Until then, it’s hard to comment on whether it’s possible.”
But there is a growing case on Callisto. It has Surprising oxygenand no one can figure out what most of the source is. The possibility of bringing it to more and more underground oceans is growing, and while it is still far from a sure thing, it is enough evidence to show that when the mission arrives in 2030 and 2031, a closer look at the Jupiter-Moon.
