Effects of Transient Obliquity Tides Within Mimas' Warm, Icy Interior Preserved as a Frozen Fossil Figure

Abstract

AbstractMimas has a high eccentricity and an anomalously high physical libration like its neighbor, Enceladus, but does not appear to have a geologically active surface. We investigate Mimas' interior with a technique that infers spatial variations in tidal heating from its global shape. To account for its hydrostatic shape, we find Mimas' normalized moment of inertia is 0.375 ± 0.0025, indicating a relatively undifferentiated world. Its remaining topography is consistent with a ∼30 km thick conductive ice shell in Airy isostasy atop a weakly convecting ∼30 km thick layer that itself mantles a ∼140 km radius ice‐rock interior. The convective shell's density must be closer to the interior density to satisfy our moment of inertia and provide a denser compensating layer for Airy isostasy. This ice‐rock interior is elongated along the Mimas‐Saturn axis, which can match Mimas' observed physical libration without appealing to an ocean. The inferred ice shell thickness variations indicate a high obliquity (≈1.7°). We suggest that the obliquity damped rapidly, after which topography froze in when internal heat was conducted out of Mimas quicker than isostatic ice shell thickness variations could relax. We speculate on several possible explanations for this transient high obliquity, including excitation by ring‐forming material following the recent tidal disruption of an eccentric satellite. We cannot rule out a young Mimantean ocean, but our inferred moment of inertia favors a Mimas that was solid when it experienced a period of high obliquity, did not significantly melt during a recent resonance with Enceladus, and is solid today.