Whilst extraterrestrial liquids do occur in the Solar System, today's acoustical oceanographers have fewer sites to which they can apply their experience of Earth's oceans than perhaps they would have had in the early Solar System, with its magma oceans. Possible sites are Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moon Europa. The ability to transfer our understanding of Earth's acoustical oceanography to other moons and planets is particularly valuable, given that current understanding is sufficient to undertake complex inversions to estimate Earth's ocean environmental parameters from relatively sparse, or even naturally‐occurring, acoustical signals. However such transference should be done with care, as terms familiar in Earth's acoustical oceanography may not be correct on other worlds. For example, in a deep ocean on a small world (such as Europa), the hydrostatic pressure will not equal the product of the density, the depth, and the surface value of the acceleration due to gravity, since the latter can vary with depth, and because vertical lines are not parallel on a small planet. This paper explores two cases of transferring our terrestrial experience off world, to the ice seas of Europa, and to the methane lakes and waterfalls of Titan.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
May 2008
Meeting abstract. No PDF available.
May 01 2008
Waterfalls in space, and other problems of 'underwater' acoustics on a small planet
Timothy G. Leighton;
Timothy G. Leighton
Institute of Sound and Vibration, Univ. of Southampton, University Road, Highfield, SO17 1BJ Southampton, UK, [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
Paul R. White;
Paul R. White
Institute of Sound and Vibration, Univ. of Southampton, University Road, Highfield, SO17 1BJ Southampton, UK, [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
Daniel C. Finfer
Daniel C. Finfer
Institute of Sound and Vibration, Univ. of Southampton, University Road, Highfield, SO17 1BJ Southampton, UK, [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 123, 3401 (2008)
Citation
Timothy G. Leighton, Paul R. White, Daniel C. Finfer; Waterfalls in space, and other problems of 'underwater' acoustics on a small planet. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 May 2008; 123 (5_Supplement): 3401. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2934098
Download citation file:
64
Views
Citing articles via
A survey of sound source localization with deep learning methods
Pierre-Amaury Grumiaux, Srđan Kitić, et al.
Variation in global and intonational pitch settings among black and white speakers of Southern American English
Aini Li, Ruaridh Purse, et al.
Related Content
Sonar equations for planetary exploration
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (August 2016)
Analysis and Design of a Human Spaceflight to Mars, Europa, and Titan
AIP Conference Proceedings (January 2010)
Mission Concepts for Studying Enceladus
AIP Conference Proceedings (January 2008)
Extraterrestrial sound for planetaria: A pedagogical study
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (August 2016)
Radar reveals new hot spots on Enceladus
Physics Today (May 2017)