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Fox-Powell, Mark G.; Stephens, Ben; Batty, Claire; Aldis, Angus; Hammond, Sam; Barton, Tim and Gladding, Toni
URL: https://agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon24/meetingapp.c...
Plain Language Summary
Icy plumes at ocean worlds, such as those erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, hold enormous promise in exploring the habitability of subsurface oceans in our Solar System, because they eject frozen droplets of ocean water into space, where they can be studied by spacecraft. Measurements by the Cassini spacecraft implied that the plumes of Enceladus originate through vigorous bubbling of gases at a liquid-vapor interface below the ice. We studied the chemistry of natural geysers plumes in Iceland, which form through similar mechanisms, to better understand the relationship between ejected droplets and the fluid they originate from. Our data show that plume aerosols can differ significantly in chemical composition from their source fluid, with some elements becoming depleted 100 or even 1000-fold in the aerosols when compared with their source. Our findings imply that plume particles at ocean worlds may not directly reflect the chemistry of their subsurface oceans, and that an in-depth knowledge of plume processes is needed in order to interpret measurements by Cassini and future spacecraft.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
