[PLS] Ian Pamerleau (Cornell)

“Don’t judge a planet by its crust: Interior structures of non-tidally heated icy worlds from geophysical models”

Icy bodies are found throughout the outer solar system from moons orbiting giants to solitary dwarf planets in the asteroid and Kuiper belts. These water-rich worlds display a variety of surface geologic activity; objects like Europa and Enceladus have young, active surfaces with subsurface oceans due to tidal heating they receive from their orbits. However, many other ice-rich worlds only receive heat from radiogenic decay of isotopes from their interiors. As a majority of icy bodies are not tidally heated, it is important to understand their interiors to elucidate their evolution and potential for habitability. Here, I investigate possible interior structures of two of the closest non-tidally heated icy worlds: Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, and Callisto, the fourth Galilean moon. I use a combination of topographic analysis and numerical modeling to test internal structures and compositions that best match observations from spacecraft data. It is possible that these colder, non-tidally heated bodies have interior structures that are more akin to Europa and Enceladus than previously thought, and future high-resolution data from upcoming missions can help us test these hypotheses.

Planetary Lunch Seminar —

Colloquia topics span the range of research interests of the department’s planetary sciences research program, and the talks are intended to appeal to any graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty with a background in planetary science. Speakers include members of the MIT community and visitors.

Contact: planetary-org@mit.edu