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Waterfalls in space, and other problems of "underwater" acoustics on a small planet

Waterfalls in space, and other problems of "underwater" acoustics on a small planet
Waterfalls in space, and other problems of "underwater" acoustics on a small planet
Whilst extraterrestrial liquids do occur in the Solar System, today's acoustical oceanographers have fewer sites to which they can apply their experience of Earth's oceans than perhaps they would have had in the early Solar System, with its magma oceans. Possible sites are Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moon Europa. The ability to transfer our understanding of Earth's acoustical oceanography to other moons and planets is particularly valuable, given that current understanding is sufficient to undertake complex inversions to estimate Earth's ocean environmental parameters from relatively sparse, or even naturally-occurring, acoustical signals. However such transference should be done with care, as terms familiar in Earth's acoustical oceanography may not be correct on other worlds. For example, in a deep ocean on a small world (such as Europa), the hydrostatic pressure will not equal the product of the density, the depth, and the surface value of the acceleration due to gravity, since the latter can vary with depth, and because vertical lines are not parallel on a small planet. This paper explores two cases of transferring our terrestrial experience off world, to the ice seas of Europa, and to the methane lakes and waterfalls of Titan. ©2008 Acoustical Society of America
0001-4966
3401
Leighton, Timothy G.
3e5262ce-1d7d-42eb-b013-fcc5c286bbae
White, Paul R.
2dd2477b-5aa9-42e2-9d19-0806d994eaba
Finfer, Daniel C.
a4dfa709-4f6d-4b4f-9ecb-47fe38d1efe8
Leighton, Timothy G.
3e5262ce-1d7d-42eb-b013-fcc5c286bbae
White, Paul R.
2dd2477b-5aa9-42e2-9d19-0806d994eaba
Finfer, Daniel C.
a4dfa709-4f6d-4b4f-9ecb-47fe38d1efe8

Leighton, Timothy G., White, Paul R. and Finfer, Daniel C. (2008) Waterfalls in space, and other problems of "underwater" acoustics on a small planet. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123 (5), 3401. (doi:10.1121/1.2934098).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Whilst extraterrestrial liquids do occur in the Solar System, today's acoustical oceanographers have fewer sites to which they can apply their experience of Earth's oceans than perhaps they would have had in the early Solar System, with its magma oceans. Possible sites are Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moon Europa. The ability to transfer our understanding of Earth's acoustical oceanography to other moons and planets is particularly valuable, given that current understanding is sufficient to undertake complex inversions to estimate Earth's ocean environmental parameters from relatively sparse, or even naturally-occurring, acoustical signals. However such transference should be done with care, as terms familiar in Earth's acoustical oceanography may not be correct on other worlds. For example, in a deep ocean on a small world (such as Europa), the hydrostatic pressure will not equal the product of the density, the depth, and the surface value of the acceleration due to gravity, since the latter can vary with depth, and because vertical lines are not parallel on a small planet. This paper explores two cases of transferring our terrestrial experience off world, to the ice seas of Europa, and to the methane lakes and waterfalls of Titan. ©2008 Acoustical Society of America

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Published date: May 2008

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Local EPrints ID: 57847
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/57847
ISSN: 0001-4966
PURE UUID: ed6ef17b-201f-4de7-91ee-8abdaf01df91
ORCID for Timothy G. Leighton: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1649-8750
ORCID for Paul R. White: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4787-8713

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Date deposited: 20 Aug 2008
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:44

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Author: Paul R. White ORCID iD
Author: Daniel C. Finfer

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