Io's Global Magma Ocean Theory

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molten magma ocean

Wired

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Entertainment

The Mysterious Inner Workings of Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon

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83% Informative

Scientists have been trying to understand Io ’s exuberant volcanism ever since.

A leading theory has been that just below the moon's crust hides a global magma ocean, a vast contiguous cache of liquid rock.

The data has reopened a mystery that spills over into other rocky worlds.

Io's volcanism is powered by a gravity-driven mechanism called tidal heating.

New study finds Jupiter 's moon Io has a magma ocean beneath its surface.

Jupiter 's Jupiter 's moons Io was thought to have an ocean of liquid rock 50 kilometers thick, or almost five times thicker than the Pacific Ocean at its deepest point.

The new study doesn’t rule out a deeper, deeper ocean of magma beneath the surface.

Galileo ’s magnetometer detected signs of a shallow magma ocean, but Juno gravity data has emphatically ruled that out.

Tidal heating might struggle to create magma oceans, but on icy moons, it can easily make watery oceans due to the bizarrely low density of ice.

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