UND astronomers help uncover mysteries of Miranda
UND scholars team up with researchers at Johns Hopkins, Planetary Science Institute to find evidence for ocean on Uranian moon
Scholars team up with researchers at Johns Hopkins, Planetary Science Institute to find evidence for ocean on Uranian moon
A new study suggests Uranus’ moon, Miranda, may harbor a water ocean beneath its surface, a finding that would challenge many assumptions about the moon’s history and composition and could put it in the company of the few select worlds in our solar system with potentially life-sustaining environments.
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“To find evidence of an ocean inside a small object like Miranda is incredibly surprising,” said Tom Nordheim, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, a study co-author and the principal investigator on the project that funded the study. “It helps build on the story that some of these moons at Uranus may be really interesting — that there may be several ocean worlds around one of the most distant planets in our solar system, which is both exciting and bizarre.”
Also involved in the research project and co-author of the The Planetary Science Journal article is Sherry Fieber-Beyer, associate professor of Space Studies, who said the project is significant because it helps planetary scientists better frame the context of the solar system’s formation and evolution.
“Evolutionary models of the solar system invoke giant planet migrations scattering objects from the inner solar system to the outer system—and vice versa,” said Fieber-Beyer. “These migrations resulted in the creation of Jupiter’s asteroids, irregular satellites, and other astronomical phenomena. We must consider whether these moons formed at their location or whether they were captured during planetary migration.”
Among the moons in the solar system, Miranda stands out. The few images Voyager 2 captured in 1986 show Miranda’s southern hemisphere (the only part we’ve seen) is a Frankenstein-like hodgepodge of grooved terrain quartered off by rough scarps and cratered areas, like squares on a quilt. Most researchers suspect these bizarre structures are the result of tidal forces and heating within the moon.