Icy Moons Are Ocean Worlds

(mceglowski.substack.com)

45 points | by worldvoyageur 12 hours ago

3 comments

  • exhilaration 2 hours ago
    Great read, other than Europa I wasn't aware of these other candidate ocean moons.
  • miohtama 5 hours ago
    TIL

    > The radiation environment around Europa is punishing; an astronaut standing on the surface would get a fatal dose in about a day

    • kaseijin 1 hour ago
      True for all the Galilean Moons more or less. Their orbits all lie within the Jovian equivalent of the Van Allen belts. And Jupiter's magnetic field is much stronger than earth's.
      • sennalen 6 minutes ago
        Not Callisto. Being within Jupiter's magnetosphere but out of reach of Io's shenanigans makes it one of the mildest radiation environments in the solar system.
      • idlewords 51 minutes ago
        Not true at all, the daily dose on Ganymede (which has a magnetic field of its own) is ~70 mSv/day, and Callisto is 0.1 mSv/day.

        Io, meanwhile, is 35 Sv/day. Location really matters among the four Galilean moons.

  • pvaldes 4 hours ago
    Beautifully designed article. Very cool images and diagrams.

    > We want rocks in contact with water,

    But there is ice compressed between the water column and the xenoceanic bottom, ok. I see the problem.

    What about rocks in the surface of the water?. Some volcanic rocks can float.