Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Titanium is like Calisto

His interior, at least. Or this is what is inferred of the results of the probe Cassini. After flying over this moon time and again, the scientists can study the approximate distribution of the material inside this world. And the result is surprising: the Titanium interior seems to be relatively homogeneous and it is not distributed in different layers like that of the Earth or Ganímedes. And why is it a strange result? So because the images of the radar of Cassini seem to indicate certain activity criovolcánica (vulcanismo in that the water, together with other substances like the ammonia, plays the role of the magma in the Earth), something difficult of telling if a water cloak does not exist under the crust. Of course, a "thin" water layer might exist under the surface that would serve like source of the criovolcanes, but it does not stop being a very curious result.
Up to 500 km deep, the Titanium composition is predominantly an ice, but the rest is a homogeneous miscellany of rock and ices. This seems to indicate that Titanium formed very quickly and there was no time so that his interior was differing. In any case, it will be necessary to refine the theoretical models and to wait to new information of the Cassini to confirm these results.

No comments:

Post a Comment