Impact-Induced Climate Change on Titan

Titan's thick atmosphere and volatile surface cause it to respond to big impacts like the one that produced the prominent Menrva impact basin in a somewhat Earth-like manner. Menrva was big enough to raise the surface temperature by 100 K. If methane in the regolith is generally as abundant as it was at the Huygens landing site, Menrva would have been big enough to double the amount of methane in the atmosphere. The extra methane would have drizzled out of the atmosphere over hundreds of years. Conditions may have been favorable for clathrating volatiles such as ethane. Impacts can also create local crater lakes set in warm ice but these quickly sink below the warm ice; whether the cryptic waters quickly freeze by mixing with the ice crust or whether they long endure under the ice remains a open question. Bigger impacts can create shallow liquid water oceans at the surface. If Titan's crust is made of water ice, the putative Hotei impact (a possible 800-1200 km diameter basin, Soderblom et al 2009) would have raised the average surface temperature to 350-400 K. Water rain would have fallen and global meltwaters would have averaged 50 m to as much as 500 m deep. The meltwaters may not have lasted more than a few decades or centuries at most, but are interesting to consider given Titan's organic wealth

Plume Development of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet Impact

We have studied plume formation after a Jovian comet impact using the ZEUS-MP 2 hydrodynamics code. The three-dimensional models followed objects with 500, 750, and 1000 meter diameters. Our simulations show the development of a fast, upward-moving component of the plume in the wake of the impacting comet that "pinches off" from the bulk of the cometary material ~50 km below the 1 bar pressure level, ~100 km above the depth of greatest mass and energy deposition. The fast-moving component contains about twice the mass of the initial comet, but consists almost entirely (>99.9%) of Jovian atmosphere rather than cometary material. The ejecta rise mainly along the impact trajectory, but an additional vertical velocity component due to buoyancy establishes itself within seconds of impact, leading to an asymmetry in the ejecta with respect to the entry trajectory. The mass of the upward-moving component follows a velocity distribution M(>v) approximately proportional to v^-1.4 (v^-1.6 for the 750 m and 500 m cases) in the velocity range 0.1 < v < 10 km/s.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Transient Climate Effects of Large Impacts on Titan

Titan's thick atmosphere and volatile-rich surface cause it to respond to big impacts in a somewhat Earth-like manner. Here we construct a simple globally-averaged model that tracks the flow of energy through the environment in the weeks, years, and millenia after a big comet strikes Titan. The model Titan is endowed with 1.4 bars of N2 and 0.07 bars of CH4, methane lakes, a water ice crust, and enough methane underground to saturate the regolith to the surface. We find that a nominal Menrva impact is big enough to raise the surface temperature by approx. 80 K and to double the amount of methane in the atmosphere. The extra methane drizzles out of the atmosphere over hundreds of years. An upper-limit Menrva is just big enough to raise the surface to water's melting point. The putative Hotei impact (a possible 800-1200 km diameter basin, Soderblom et al., 2009) is big enough to raise the surface temperature to 350-400 K. Water rain must fall and global meltwaters might range between 50 m to more than a kilometer deep, depending on the details. Global meltwater oceans do not last more than a few decades or centuries at most, but are interesting to consider given Titan's organic wealth. Significant near-surface clathrate formation is possible as Titan cools but faces major kinetic barriers

Numerical modeling of the disruption of Comet D/1993 F2 Shoemaker-Levy 9 representing the progenitor by a gravitationally bound assemblage of randomly shaped polyhedra

We advance the modeling of rubble-pile solid bodies by re-examining the tidal breakup of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, an event that occurred during a 1.33 Jupiter radii encounter with that planet in July 1992. Tidal disruption of the comet nucleus led to a chain of sub-nuclei about 100-1000 m in diameter; these went on to collide with the planet two years later (Chodas & Yeomans 1996). They were intensively studied prior to and during the collisions, making SL9 the best natural benchmark for physical models of small body disruption. For the first time in the study of this event, we use numerical codes treating rubble-piles as collections of polyhedra (Korycansky & Asphaug 2009). This introduces forces of dilatation and friction, and inelastic response. As in our previous studies (Asphaug & Benz 1994,1996) we conclude that the progenitor must have been a rubble-pile, and we obtain approximately the same pre-breakup diameter (about 1.5 km) in our best fits to the data. We find that the inclusion of realistic fragment shapes leads to grain locking and dilatancy, so that even in the absence of friction or other dissipation we find that disruption is overall more difficult than in our spheres-based simulations. We constrain the comet's bulk density at about 300-400 kg/m^3, half that of our spheres-based predictions and consistent with recent estimates derived from spacecraft observations.Comment: Submitted to The Astrophysical Journal (7/16/12) added Acknowledgments (8/29/12) accepted, peer reviewed versio

Plume Development of The Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet Impact

We have studied the plume formation after a Jovian comet impact using the ZEUS-MP 2 hydrodynamics code. The three-dimensional models followed objects with 500, 750, and 1000 m diameters. Our simulations show the development of a fast, upward-moving component of the plume in the wake of the impacting comet that pinches off from the bulk of the cometary material similar to 50 km below the 1 bar pressure level, similar to 100 km above the depth of the greatest mass and energy deposition. The fast-moving component contains about twice the mass of the initial comet, but consists almost entirely ( \u3e 99.9%) of Jovian atmosphere rather than cometary material. The ejecta rise mainly along the impact trajectory, but an additional vertical velocity component due to buoyancy establishes itself within seconds of impact, leading to an asymmetry in the ejecta with respect to the entry trajectory. The mass of the upward-moving component follows a velocity distribution M( \u3e upsilon) approximately proportional to upsilon (1.4) (upsilon (1.6) for the 750 m and 500 m cases) in the velocity range 0.1 km s(-1) \u3c upsilon \u3c 10 km s(-1)

NUMERICAL MODELING OF THE 2009 IMPACT EVENT ON JUPITER

We have investigated the 2009 July impact event on Jupiter using the ZEUS-MP 2 three-dimensional hydrodynamics code. We studied the impact itself and the following plume development. Eight impactors were considered: 0.5 km and 1 km porous (\rho = 1.760 g cm^{-3}) and non-porous (\rho = 2.700 g cm^{-3}) basalt impactors, and 0.5 km and 1 km porous (\rho = 0.600 g cm^{-3}) and non-porous \rho = 0.917 g cm^{-3}) ice impactors. The simulations consisted of these bolides colliding with Jupiter at an incident angle of \theta = 69 degrees from the vertical and with an impact velocity of v = 61.4 km s^{-1}. Our simulations show the development of relatively larger, faster plumes created after impacts involving 1 km diameter bodies. Comparing simulations of the 2009 event with simulations of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 events reveals a difference in plume development, with the higher incident angle of the 2009 impact leading to a shallower terminal depth and a smaller and slower plume. We also studied the amount of dynamical chaos present in the simulations conducted at the 2009 incident angle. Compared to the chaos of the SL9 simulations, where \theta is approximately 45 degrees, we find no significant difference in chaos at the higher 2009 incident angle.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Numerical Modeling of The 2009 Impact Event On Jupiter

We have investigated the 2009 July impact event on Jupiter using the ZEUS-MP 2 three-dimensional hydrodynamics code. We studied the impact itself and the following plume development. Eight impactors were considered: 0.5 km and 1 km porous (rho = 1.760 g cm (3)) and non-porous (rho = 2.700 g cm (3)) basalt impactors, and 0.5 km and 1 km porous (rho = 0.600 g cm(-3)) and non-porous (rho = 0.917 g cm(-3)) ice impactors. The simulations consisted of these bolides colliding with Jupiter at an incident angle of theta = 69 degrees from the vertical and with an impact velocity of v = 61.4 km s(-1). Our simulations show the development of relatively larger, faster plumes created after impacts involving 1 km diameter bodies. Comparing simulations of the 2009 event with simulations of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) events reveals a difference in plume development, with the higher incident angle of the 2009 impact leading to a shallower terminal depth and a smaller and slower plume. We also studied the amount of dynamical chaos present in the simulations conducted at the 2009 incident angle. Compared to the chaos of the SL9 simulations, where theta approximate to 45 degrees, we find no significant difference in chaos at the higher 2009 incident angle