P51A-2041
Convection in Solid Nitrogen and Other Supervolatile Ices on Pluto
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
William B McKinnon1, Francis Nimmo2, Orkan M Umurhan3, Teresa Wong1, James H Roberts4, Alan Stern5, Harold A Weaver Jr6, John R Spencer7, Jeffrey M Moore8, Paul Schenk9, Catherine Olkin7, Leslie Ann Young7, Kimberly Ennico Smith8 and New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Theme Team, (1)Washington University in St Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States, (2)University of California-Santa Cruz, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA, United States, (3)SETI Institute Mountain View, Mountain View, CA, United States, (4)Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, United States, (5)Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (7)Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (9)Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, United States
Abstract:
N2, CO, and CH4 ices are all very weak, van der Waals bonded molecular solids. As such they are not expected to be able to support appreciable surface topography over any great length of geologic time, even at the surface conditions of bodies such as Pluto or Triton (J.M. Moore et al., Geology before Pluto: Pre-encounter considerations, Icarus 246, 65–81, 2015). Nitrogen ice, the most volatile of these, is the volumetrically dominant ice in the optically active surface of Pluto and may exist in more substantive, massive accumulations as well. We examine the possibility of convective overturn in surface layers of nitrogen and other “supervolatile” ices on Pluto, based on the best available rheologies. The characteristics of such convection may differ from those observed or expected on the terrestrial planets and icy satellites. We will discuss whether these characteristics possess any explanatory power for Pluto.
