Pulsed Power from Enceladus!

[mharratsc]

Here's an article from the boys at PhysOrg:

http://www.physorg.com/news182448842.html

As The Crust Turns: Cassini Data Show Enceladus in Motion

About four years ago, Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer instrument detected a heat flow in the south polar region of at least 6 gigawatts, the equivalent of at least a dozen electric power plants. This is at least three times as much heat as an average region of Earth of similar area would produce, despite Enceladus' small size. The region was also later found by Cassini's ion and neutral mass spectrometer instrument to be swiftly expelling argon, which comes from rocks decaying radioactively and has a well-known rate of decay.

How do they account for the production of argon? Could it only be EDM'ed from surface rock, or could it come from the ice itself? If it could only come from the rock, then how is it making it's way through the ice to be seen in a plasma jet? Is it possible that the ice isn't as deep as they suspect, or that the trenches are deeper than was originally thought?

It seems in the article that they are suggesting that the pulses of 'heat' last for 100 million years, then it is quiet for 100 million to 2 billion years... would anyone be a bit surprised to discover that it's tied to the solar cycle in some fashion?

[solrey]

There is heat equated to a dozen powerplants, around 6 gigawatts. They detect argon ( likely argon-40 ) which is a "decay" product of potassium-40.

This is at least three times as much heat as an average region of Earth of similar area would produce, despite Enceladus' small size.

It's pretty frakin' cold, too.

Where the hell does all that heat come from?

From this link:

Two other radioactive clocks are used for dating geologic time. One is potassium-40, which decays by electron capture to argon-40.
40K + -1e 40Ar t½ = 1.3 × 109 years

About 1.3 billion years for potassium-40 to decay to argon-40 by "electron capture", which is within the range of a billion year event as they describe.

So there is this:

Breakdown of Argon at Low Pressure in a Longitudinal Magnetic Field

We measured the breakdown probability at a low pressure in argon over the range from 0 to 1,500 gauss of the magnetic field parallel to the electric field. With the overvoltage fixed at 16.5%, the number of times of breakdown was counted for the applied square pulses with an electronic counter. Thus we found that the breakdown probability increased with magnetic field intensity. We calculated the breakdown probability on the assumption that breakdown was caused by multi-avalanche, and the secondary mechanism was due to the drift of resonance radiation in the diffusion process as Kachikas and Fisher had suggested. A fairly good agreement between theory and experiment was attained and the drift velocity of resonance radiation was about 9.5×105 cm. sec-1 in our calculation. ©1960 The Physical Society of Japan

Ooops, there's Japan again.

Let's try this and see if there are any similarities:

The atmosphere of Mars consists of carbon dioxide and rare gases,
notably argon and neon. If the pre-encounter atmosphere was of
similar composition, we would expect electrical discharging between
an anode Mars and a cathode Moon to result in a massive transfer of
these gases to the Moon. It is in the nature of things for positive
ions from a discharge medium to become deeply implanted in cathode
surface materials .

And what gases are found to be implanted from the outside into lunar
surface materials? Precisely, carbon dioxide, argon, neon, and other
rare gases.

Seems to me that we're looking at an electric field causing the potassium-40 isotopes to break down to argon-40 isotopes via "electron capture". Potassium is a common element in rocks.
Think this might throw the chronology off a bit if potassium were exposed to an unacknowledged electric field?

I know that I commented on that physorg article this morning, but I'm not seeing it or any of the previous or following comments at this time, besides the first comment by a spammer. Hmmmmm.
Anyways...
How the heck does billion year tidal heating only produce "geysers" at the south pole which we just happen to be lucky enough to witness?
What are the odds?

OK, going outside to scream now.

[solrey]

OK, two different articles about the same process on Enceladus. I commented on this one.

The following is from this article:

The model fits the activity on Enceladus when the churning and resurfacing periods are assumed to last about 10 million years, and the quiet periods, when the surface ice is undisturbed, last about 100 million to two billion years. Their model suggests the active periods have occurred only 1 to 10 percent of the time that Enceladus has existed and have recycled 10 to 40 percent of the surface. The active area around Enceladus's south pole is about 10 percent of its surface.

They're OK with a margin of error between 100 million to 2 billion years, or 1 to 10 percent, or 10 to 40 percent??!!???
Maybe they're just guessing. Oh wait, they have expensive degrees, so it must be true.


I suppose in retrospect, my margin or error is whether or not the argon is produced in situ from Potassium, or implanted via the plasma connection between Enceladus and Saturn. Probably a little of both.

going outside to chop wood, it's all good.

[StefanR]

A somewhat related subject?

Argon find bodes well for Rosetta's noble mission

A group of American and French astronomers, including several who are playing a leading role in the Rosetta mission, has announced the discovery of the noble gas argon in Comet Hale-Bopp. This is the first time that one of the so-called noble gases (argon, xenon, neon etc.) has been found in a comet.

The presence of argon is important because noble gases do not interact chemically with other elements and are easily lost from icy bodies like comets through sublimation -- a process much like evaporation. This means they can be used to indicate the temperature of a comet during its formation and its evolutionary history.

Although the spectral signature of the gas was quite weak, the data indicated that the comet contained more argon than expected, when compared to the composition of the Sun. The argon abundance in Hale-Bopp was so high that the comet must have formed far from the Sun and spent almost its entire life -- about 4.5 billion years -- in the cold, frigid outer reaches of the Solar System.

"This enrichment was completely unexpected," said Dr. Stern. "It shows that the comet's core temperature has never risen above 40K (-233 C), otherwise the argon would all have sublimated and dispersed into space. Curiously, Jupiter has also been found to be enriched in argon, suggesting that some of the planet's argon gas may have been delivered by argon-rich comets falling into its atmosphere."

Dr. Stern believes that this breakthrough is just the start of a new series of discoveries about comets.

"We want to see if other comets are also enriched in noble gases," he explained. "Using even more sensitive instruments, such as the ALICE spectrometer on board Rosetta, we look forward to comparing different comets to one another to learn about the diversity of cometary birthplaces. We also want to see if different parts of a comet have similar amounts of noble gases. This will tell us if different regions have different origins."

http://eu.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2037
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/comet-00c.html

Introduction: With recent measurements of the
D/H ratio in three comets, it has become possible to
use the hydrogen isotopic composition of comets to
constrain the possible contribution of comets to water
on the Earth and Mars [1-4]. Even more recently, the
first measurement of argon in a comet [5] has made it
possible to use noble gases to address the same problem.
We will show that comets could not have supplied
any significant fraction of Earth’s water, unless it occurred
in the first 100 Ma of Earth history, or came
from “comets” unlike those coming from the Oort
Cloud today. Similar calculations for Mars are more
ambiguous because of possible loss processes for argon.
However, comets could not be providing the bulk
of the objects impacting Mars in the last 3.5 Ga.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/gold2001/pdf/3785.pdf