{"id":185147,"date":"2024-03-15T10:23:37","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T15:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/ice-shell-thickness-reveals-water-temperature-on-ocean-worlds"},"modified":"2024-03-15T10:23:37","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T15:23:37","slug":"ice-shell-thickness-reveals-water-temperature-on-ocean-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/ice-shell-thickness-reveals-water-temperature-on-ocean-worlds","title":{"rendered":"Ice Shell Thickness reveals Water Temperature on Ocean Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ice-shell-thickness-reveals-water-temperature-on-ocean-worlds2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cornell University astrobiologists have devised a novel way to determine ocean temperatures of distant worlds based on the thickness of their ice shells, effectively conducting oceanography from space.<\/p>\n<p>Available data showing ice thickness variation already allows a prediction for the upper ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, and a NASA mission\u2019s planned orbital survey of Europa\u2019s ice shell should do the same for the much larger Jovian moon, enhancing the mission\u2019s findings about whether it could support life.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers propose that a process called \u201cice pumping,\u201d which they\u2019ve observed below Antarctic ice shelves, likely shapes the undersides of Europa\u2019s and Enceladus\u2019 ice shells, but should also operate at Ganymede and Titan, large moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. They show that temperature ranges where the ice and ocean interact \u2014 important regions where ingredients for life may be exchanged \u2014 can be calculated based on an ice shell\u2019s slope and changes in water\u2019s freezing point at different pressures and salinities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cornell University astrobiologists have devised a novel way to determine ocean temperatures of distant worlds based on the thickness of their ice shells, effectively conducting oceanography from space. Available data showing ice thickness variation already allows a prediction for the upper ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, and a NASA mission\u2019s planned orbital survey [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}