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Entries in "Titan"

Titan's interior and orbital evolution

Tobie, G, O Grasset, JI Lunine, A Mocquet, and C Sotin, Titan's internal structure inferred froma coupled thermal-orbital model, Icarus, 175, 496-502, (2005), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2004.12.007

A coupled thermal-orbital model of Titan's internal evolution to try to understand whether the satellite's current eccentricity (0.0292) can place some limits on the existence and composition of subsurface oceans. An interesting result is that they conclude that if Titan has a completely solid interior, it has always been that way, and the same of it has a liquid layer, there would always have been one since the separation of the silicate core. I was also intrigued by the notion that the later convection starts in the ice Ih layer, the smaller the initial eccentricity required to reach the present day eccentricity. I presume this is because the warmer temperatures (lower viscosities) consistent with convection also aid the tidal dissipation in the interior. It also appears that these models do not place much of a constraint on the initial eccentricity and may have some difficulty explaining the 4:3 resonance between Hyperion and Titan.