Thermal and topographic tests of Europa chaos formation models from Galileo E15 observations

Abstract

Stereo topography of an area near Tyre impact crater, Europa, reveals chaos regions characterised by marginal cliffs and domical topography, rising to 100–200 m above the background plains. The regions contain blocks which have both rotated and tilted. We tested two models of chaos formation: a hybrid diapir model, in which chaos topography is caused by thermal or compositional buoyancy, and block motion occurs due to the presence of near-surface (1–3 km) melt; and a melt-through model, in which chaos regions are caused by melting and refreezing of the ice shell. None of the hybrid diapir models tested generate any melt within 1–3 km of the surface, owing to the low surface temperature. A model of ocean refreezing following melt-through gives effective elastic thicknesses and ice shell thicknesses of 0.1–0.3 and 0.5–2 km, respectively. However, for such low shell thicknesses the refreezing model requires implausibly large lateral density contrasts (50–100 kg m −3) to explain the elevation of the centres of the chaos regions. Although a global equilibrium ice shell thickness of ≈2 km is possible if Europa's mantle resembles that of Io, it is unclear whether local melt-through events are energetically possible. Thus, neither of the models tested here gives a completely satisfactory explanation for the formation of chaos regions. We suggest that surface extrusion of warm ice may be an important component of chaos terrain formation, and demonstrate that such extrusion is possible for likely ice parameters.