Abstract: Io's extensive volcanism was predicted in 1979 as a consequence of Europa and Ganymede's gravitational influence on Io's orbit around Jupiter. Less than a week later, this was confirmed by Voyager 1 observations of volcanic plumes on Io's surface. Decades later, the Galileo spacecraft (named for Io's discoverer) observed magnetic field variations that hinted a global magma ocean may be swirling beneath Io's surface. Following tradition, I raced to predict if Juno flybys of Io would reveal another signature of a magma ocean from gravity field measurements. In this seminar, I will cover both the geophysical theory used to make my prediction and the spacecraft observational techniques that were needed to confirm it. 

 

Bio: Szilárd Gyalay earned his Bachelor's in astrophysics at UCLA and a PhD in Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Despite this, he studies neither the stars nor the Earth; instead, he focuses on other planetary bodies within our solar system. Through his work, he has explored the Lunar near-surface, the Martian crust, and the interiors of outer planet satellites. He is currently at NASA Ames Research Center through the SETI Institute, where he primarily works on optical visible and near-infrared instrumentation for upcoming Lunar spacecraft missions.

 

 

Suggested reading: White et al. (2014), JGR: Planets 119(6), doi: 10.1002/2013JE004591. It's a little long, so I recommend that folks focus on skimming Sections 1, 5, 6, and 8; which is <40% of the paper.