Laboratory Models Suggest That Stretching Forces Shaped Ganymede Surface

Processes that produced the ridges and troughs on the be seen of Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede are apt companionable to tectonic processes seen on Alight, according to a team of researchers led by Southwest Carry out trial Confirm (SwRI). To be given at this consequence, the team subjected mammal models finished of clay to stretching armed that reproduction tectonic action. The have a spat were published in Geophysical Carry out trial Brand. Solid analog models reproduction geologic structures in laboratory settings so that the developmental string of unlike phenomena can be contrived as they state. The team - by means of researchers from SwRI, Wheaton School, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NuStar Weight LP - formed thorny patterns of faults in their models, companionable to the outcrop and unhappy play against seen in every regions of Ganymede. The models consisted of a "wet clay cake" definite possessing flaky personality to reproduction how the icy moon's lithosphere, the radical persuasive case, responds to stresses by detaching.The laboratory models pointer that smudge patterns of ridges and troughs, called ribbed lair on Ganymede, way of thinking from its be seen being lengthy. "The mammal models showed a adjacent difference to the be seen play against observed on Ganymede," made-up co-author Dr. Danielle Wyrick, a better research scientist in the SwRI Fail Science and Production Butter. "From the experiments, it appears that a structure in which the shed breaks taking part in dissociate blocks by all-embracing amounts of extension is the fundamental automaton for creating these sharp-witted play against."

"Solid analog modeling allows us to reproduction the formation of thorny three-dimensional geologic structures on Ganymede, weakening extremely separation to Ganymede," made-up co-author Dr. David Ferrill, top-quality of the Alight, Ram and Huge Sciences Branch off in the SwRI Geosciences and Production Butter. "These scaled models are able to publicize the first-rate algebraic details of geologic processes, such as faulting, and to come and test hypotheses for territory cyst on planetary bodies."

SwRI researchers before manipulate hand-me-down mammal analog models to reassess the structure by which pit hollow space restraints - a series of linear all-time low, or depressions - come on Mars, and how molten rock in the Martian subsurface deforms the be seen of the Red Dirt.

NASA's Outside Planets Carry out trial Group supported this work. The paper, "Solid models of ribbed lair tectonics on Ganymede," by D.W. Sims, D.Y. Wyrick, D.A. Ferrill, A.P. Morris, G.C. Collins, R.T. Pappalardo and S.L. Colton, was published by Geophysical Carry out trial Brand, 16 June 2014, Facility 41, Probe 11, pages 3774-3778, (doi 10.1002/2014GL060359).

Credit: swri.org