Jérémy Rekier (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Title : The Tidal Flows in Ocean Worlds

Abstract :

Planet Earth is one of a handful of ocean worlds in the solar system. Others include Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, as well as Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus. Other such worlds might also exist in orbit around Uranus and Neptune. In all of these bodies, tidal heating plays a crucial role in keeping the water ocean from freezing, thereby extending the habitable zone beyond its classical circumstellar (aka Goldilocks) limit. Some authors even consider that such worlds orbiting exoplanets might be more habitable than analogues to the Earth. This makes exploration of the ocean worlds that are closer to us crucial in order to understand the conditions for extraterrestrial life, and this involves paying close attention to the process of tidal heating.

Exploration of the fluid dynamics of icy moons is a complicated matter, in large part due to the subsurface nature of their oceans. We present some of the methods developed to this end, inspired by previous work focusing on the study of the Earth’s and planet’s deep interior. We show how tidal flows can be resonantly amplified by inertial modes (restored by the Coriolis force) in liquid oceans, and how these modes are affected by density stratification.

The seminar will take place in Room S08 at the Faculty of Sciences.