ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM - APRIL 11, 2006
Christopher Chyba, Princeton University
New Constraints on Europa's Ocean
We will quickly review the evidence for Europa's liquid water ocean,
then discuss new empirical constraints on the ocean's salinity and
those constraints' implications for the thickness of the europan ice
shell. Galileo spacecraft magnetometer data combined with gravity
data and simple interior models appear to require that the ice shell
be thin, and the ocean extremely saline. If there is time, some
astrobiological implications will be discussed.