{"id":100539,"date":"2025-10-03T05:25:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T05:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/100539\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T05:25:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T05:25:14","slug":"new-simulations-decode-its-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/100539\/","title":{"rendered":"New Simulations Decode Its Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Cassini<\/a>Saturn\u2019s icy moon Enceladus loses ice mass to space by cryovolcanic geyers, and new TACC supercomputer simulations have improved estimates of ice mass loss. These findings help with understanding and future robotic exploration of what\u2019s below the surface of the icy moon, which might harbor life. Credit: NASA
\nSimulations indicate that Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus ejects less ice into space than previously estimated.<\/p>\n

In the 1600s, astronomers Christiaan Huygens and Giovanni Cassini aimed their telescopes at Saturn and made a groundbreaking discovery. What appeared to be glowing bands around the planet were not solid structures at all, but enormous rings made up of countless smaller arcs.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of years later, NASA\u2019s Cassini-Huygens (Cassini) mission carried this exploration to an entirely new level. Beginning in 2005, the spacecraft captured a continuous stream of striking images that reshaped scientific knowledge of Saturn and its moons. One of its most remarkable findings was on Enceladus, a frozen world where immense geysers shoot icy particles into space, creating a faint ring that circles the planet.<\/p>\n

Now, researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) have used Cassini\u2019s data in advanced supercomputer models to refine estimates of how much ice Enceladus ejects into space. These new results are important for understanding the moon\u2019s activity and will also guide future robotic missions that may one day probe its hidden subsurface ocean, a potential habitat for life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mass flow rates from Enceladus are between 20 to 40 percent lower than what you find in the scientific literature,\u201d said Arnaud Mahieux, a senior researcher at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy and an affiliate of the UT Austin Department of Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics.<\/p>\n

Supercomputers to Enceladus<\/p>\n

Mahieux is the corresponding author of a computational study of Enceladus recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. In it, he and colleagues developed Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) models that improve understanding of the structure and behavior of enormous plumes of water vapor and icy particles ejected by vents on the Enceladus surface.<\/p>\n

This study builds on prior work published<\/a> in 2019 and led by Mahieux that first used DSMC models to derive the initial conditions that create the icy plumes, such as vent size, ratio of water vapor to ice grains, temperature, and the speed of exit.<\/p>\n

\"Supercomputers<\/a>Enceladus simulations were performed on the Lonestar6 (left) and Stampede3 (right) supercomputers of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, allocated through awards by the University of Texas Research Cyber\u00adinfra\u00adstructure Portal. Credit: TACC<\/p>\n

\u201cDSMC simulations are very expensive,\u201d Mahieux said. \u201cWe used TACC supercomputers back in 2015 to obtain the parameterizations to reduce computation time from 48 hours then to just a few milliseconds now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revealing Enceladus\u2019s Secrets<\/p>\n

Using mathematical parameterizations, researchers calculated the density and velocity of Enceladus\u2019s cryovolcanic plumes, drawing on data Cassini gathered as it flew directly through them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main finding of our new study is that for 100 cryovolcanic sources, we could constrain the mass flow rates and other parameters that were not derived before, such as the temperature at which the material was exiting. This is a big step forward in understanding what\u2019s happening on Enceladus,\u201d Mahieux said.<\/p>\n

Enceladus is a tiny world, just 313 miles across, whose weak gravity cannot hold back the icy jets erupting from its vents. This is properly accounted for in these DSMC models. Earlier approaches were less sophisticated in their physics and gas dynamics than our DSMC model. What Enceladus does is akin to a volcano hurling lava into space\u2014except the ejecta are plumes of water vapor and ice.<\/p>\n

The simulations model how gas in the plume moves at the micro level, where particles move, collide, and exchange energy like marbles hitting each other in a game. Several millions of molecules are simulated on microsecond time steps, and the DSMC models allow calculations at a lower, more realistic pressure than before, with longer travel time between collisions.<\/p>\n

David Goldstein, UT Austin professor and study co-author, led the development in 2011 of the DSMC code called Planet. TACC awarded Goldstein allocations on the Lonestar6 and Stampede3 supercomputers through The University of Texas Research cyberinfrastructure portal, which supports researchers at all 14 UT system institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cTACC systems have a wonderful architecture that offers a lot of flexibility,\u201d Mahieux said. \u201cIf we\u2019re using the DSMC code on just a laptop, we could only simulate tiny domains. Thanks to TACC, we can simulate from the surface of Enceladus up to 10 kilometers of altitude, where the plumes expand into space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Icy Moons and Hidden Oceans<\/p>\n

Saturn dwells beyond what astronomers call the \u2018snow line\u2019 in the solar system, joining other planets with icy moons such as Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an ocean of liquid water under these \u2018big balls of ice,\u2019\u201d Mahieux said. \u201cThese are many other worlds, besides the Earth, which have a liquid ocean. The plumes at Enceladus open a window to the underground conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA and the European Space Agency are planning future missions to revisit Enceladus, with ambitions that go far beyond flybys. Proposals include landing on the moon\u2019s surface and drilling through its crust to probe the ocean below, a search for signs of life hidden beneath miles of ice. Understanding and measuring the content of the Enceladus plumes gives us a way of actually measuring what is happening below the surface without drilling through the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cSupercomputers can give us answers to questions we couldn\u2019t dream of asking even 10 or 15 years ago,\u201d Mahieux said. \u201cWe can now get much closer to simulating what nature is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cEnceladus Water Plume Modeling Using DSMC\u201d by A. Mahieux, D. B. Goldstein, P. L. Varghese, L. M. Trafton, G. Portyankina, L. W. Esposito, M. E. Perry, J. H. Waite, B. S. Southworth and S. Kempf, 29 August 2025, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
DOI: 10.1029\/2025JE009008<\/a><\/p>\n

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