(ORDO NEWS) — Jupiter’s closest moon, Io, contains as little water as almost any other large body in the solar system.
Astronomers attributed this to the high activity of the young planet, whose radiation evaporated all the water from Io and most of it from neighboring Europa.
Giant Jupiter is surrounded by almost a hundred moons, including the four largest – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
If we consider them one by one, we can see that the farther the satellite is from the planet, the lower its density and the more water and ice on it.
Io, closest to Jupiter, is considered perhaps the “driest” of the large bodies of the solar system.
All this may be due to the high activity that Jupiter showed in the first time of its existence. Its powerful radiation exceeded the current level by orders of magnitude and literally dried up the satellites one by one.
This conclusion was reached by Carver Bierson and his colleagues at Arizona State University. Their report was made at the recent 54th Scientific Conference on the Moon and Planets.
When Jupiter was formed, large satellites were formed from the remnants of matter in its orbit.
Then they contained quite a sufficient amount of water, but the matter did not end there. The young gas giant radiated ten thousand times more actively than today.
Bjerson et al. modeled the effect of this radiation on Jupiter’s moons.
As the authors noted, the model was based on the current position of four satellites, although it is believed that in that distant past they orbited closer to the planet than they do now, and could receive even more radiation.
But even with this assumption, calculations showed that under such conditions, the temperature of Io could exceed 27 degrees Celsius. More than enough to melt all the ice on the surface and create an atmosphere full of water vapor.
With its rather modest size, Io is not able to keep the shell of volatile gases even today, when the flow of particles from Jupiter that undermines it has noticeably weakened.
As a result, all the steam quickly escaped and, most likely, fell on a neighboring planet, as happens today with the gases of volcanoes, which are extremely active on Io.
Apparently, similar processes took place on other “Galilean” moons of Jupiter, although on a smaller scale.
As a result, some of the water from Europa escaped, but some remained in the subsurface ocean, protected by a thick ice crust. Ganymede and Callisto retained even more water and are still almost half of it.
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