Could Laythe actually exist with real physics?

[Themohawkninja]

It occurred to me as I was fantasizing living on the moon, that I'm not sure if it could actually exist. As I understand it, our Moon's gravitational pull causes up to 30 foot tides on the Earth. Now on Laythe, the celestial body pulling on Laythe's tides is many times larger than itself, and Laythe is tidally locked to the host planet, so can Laythe even have oceans on it's surface, let alone around the entirety of the it?

[Spacial_Anomaly]

The big tidal waves on Earth are in fact resonance effects, the real tidal force of the moon would only account for 12 cm or so.

So on Laythe the mean sea level of the oceans would be a few cm or meter (would have to look up the parameters) higher on the planet facing side and the (well not planet facing, insert fitting word) site.

Edit: A (very crude) formula for when a moon is destroyed by it's planet is given by

R_s< 2.52*R_M*sqrt(rho_M/rho)

where R_M and rho_M are the radius and density of the parent body R_s the distance to the moon and rho the density of the moon. Is the distance smaller the moon will de pulled apart or at least there will be strong vulcanism. Source: http://www.geo.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~augp/AGEO3.1.pdf it's in german, the last bit (3.1.6).

Edited May 10, 2013 by Spacial_Anomaly

[ROFLCopter64bit]

Probably not. Go look up Io (or whatever the closest moon to Jupiter is, remembering hurts) and see what the side effects it has for being so close to Jupiter.

[NovaSilisko]

The general idea I had was if you scooted Europa in to around Io's position through some gravitational mishap. The tidal forces worked to melt the surface ice completely, and keep an ocean. (The atmosphere is a bit of artistic license there, it would have to form through some other means, unless it's mostly water vapor or something) Eventually I do want to make laythe quite volcanically active in addition to just having oceans. So pretty much a melted Europa plus Io. Despite the surface liquid it's not really a habitable place. Very radioactive (like Io).

[BeefTenderloin]

I don't know Nova, I kind of like the serene beauty of a far-flung yet homely moon.

[NovaSilisko]

Well, just get some lead-lined underpants and a breathing mask and you can walk around just fine

[Flixxbeatz]

What if, hypothetically speaking, Titan is now orbiting Jupiter and is in place where Io is?

Well Titan is the closest Solar System can get to Laythe, and it's not even water...

[Xellith]

Well, just get some lead-lined underpants and a breathing mask and you can walk around just fine

Are you saying that we are going to be able to equip kerbals with led lined underpants?

[Brotoro]

You would not have giant tides coming and going on Laythe (like we have tides that ebb and flow here on Earth) because Laythe is tidally locked to Jool. This means that the tidal bulges stay in the same place all the time relative to the surface.

What causes tidal heating of the Jovian moons is the fact that they tug on each other a little, which perturbs their orbits, which gets their revolution rates a little out of sync with their rotation rates...and then Jupiter works to lock them back in sync, which causes the tidal heating. We can assume the same thing is happening around Jool (even though the limited spheres of influence of the game physics means that it won't actually happen).

[kahlzun]

What if, hypothetically speaking, Titan is now orbiting Jupiter and is in place where Io is?

Well Titan is the closest Solar System can get to Laythe, and it's not even water...

Titan has very poor similarities to Laythe. Titan is cold enough its 'seas' are ammonia, and its atmosphere is a noxious goop you couldn't even see out of.

[AtmaStorm]

The radiation received on Io is due to high energy electrons thanks to Jupiter's huge magnetosphere(IIRC), not any nuclear process.

That said, I wouldn't want to live on or anywhere near Laythe, or gas giants in general IRL, the radiation is just too high.

[Kerbface]

The general idea I had was if you scooted Europa in to around Io's position through some gravitational mishap. The tidal forces worked to melt the surface ice completely, and keep an ocean. (The atmosphere is a bit of artistic license there, it would have to form through some other means, unless it's mostly water vapor or something) Eventually I do want to make laythe quite volcanically active in addition to just having oceans. So pretty much a melted Europa plus Io. Despite the surface liquid it's not really a habitable place. Very radioactive (like Io).

Ah, but a few dozen metres under water and that goes away because water is so good at blocking radiation, yes?

[Rune]

I wouldn't say impossible in KSP... I mean, considering either every planet has a bit of neutron star inside, or is made from elements much heavier than those in our periodic table.

Who knows if they even have the mechanisms that produce magnetic fields in the planets of our universe, and therefore radiation belts? And at what distance? Or how much the insolation changes with such a weird small dense star like kerbol, given the generally tiny size of the system...

Me, I buy the "melted Europa with oxygen" intention. Don't even see the need for volcanoes, tough they would be OK, as long as it is visually pleasing.

Rune. We'll find a way to explain any mistake away, anyhow.

[Sun]

The general idea I had was if you scooted Europa in to around Io's position through some gravitational mishap. The tidal forces worked to melt the surface ice completely, and keep an ocean. (The atmosphere is a bit of artistic license there, it would have to form through some other means, unless it's mostly water vapor or something) Eventually I do want to make laythe quite volcanically active in addition to just having oceans. So pretty much a melted Europa plus Io. Despite the surface liquid it's not really a habitable place. Very radioactive (like Io).

I'd like it if you added that in 0.21.

[Panichio]

Could someone please explain how the effects of orbital resonance cause heating and possible tectonic activity on Laythe?

[Brotoro]

Could someone please explain how the effects of orbital resonance cause heating and possible tectonic activity on Laythe?

A moon in an elliptical orbit will experience tidal heating because it is stretched more at periapsis than at apoapsis. This continual flexing causes the heat (just as bending a wire repeatedly will heat it up), especially for the moons close to Jupiter where the tidal forces are very strong, so Io gets a lot of heating, Europa gets less, etc...and we assume a similar effect will be going on with the moons of Jool. Now, tidal forces will also work to circularize the moon's orbit, so if there was only one moon that is small enough compared to its planet, it would eventually settle down into a perfectly circular orbit and the tidal heating would be much less (it would still occur at a lower level because tidal effects between the planet and moon will cause it to very slowly move away from the planet...and the planet will do some work on the moon to lock it into 1:1 orbit at its new slightly larger distance).

In the case of the inner three Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede), they are locked in a 4:2:1 orbital resonance. This is also the case with Jool's moons Laythe, Vall, and Tylo. In maintaining this orbital resonance, the moons tug on each other and affect each others orbits, so the eccentricity of their orbits do not stay perfectly circular. As a result, Jool does the tidal heating thing on them. (In KSP this would not actually happen because gravitational forces do not work between the moons because of the simplified physics model used in the game...and they have circular orbits...but if more realistic physics was at work, you would see a similar result there).

This heat works it way out of the moons in question, and that's what causes the volcanic and tectonic activity.

[Cryocasm]

Sure it could, you would only experience most of the water fleeing away to the side of the planet pointing towards Jool. This comes from the fact that water is liquid.

On Wikipedia somewhere, you can watch an animation, where a theoretical planetoid composed 100% of water, is pulled apart by tidal forces, because the face closer to the star experiences more gravitational pull than the side facing away. Given a few million years, the whole body (due to surface tension) well be pulled closer and closer to the star, until it breaks some barrier (I forgot the dude's name who theorized it) and is ripped apart into "drops" of water, forming a water ring, around the star. Laythe also requires a magnetic field to protect itself from Jool, provided our assumptions of Jool being a radioactive hell are true. A magnetic field usually points toward a liquid core in the case of Laythe (Jupiters magnetic field comes from electrical current in its "lithosphere", or the layer of liquid metal hydrogen which is electrically charged), which could be plausible given that its in Io's position.

[Catsceo]

Titan has very poor similarities to Laythe. Titan is cold enough its 'seas' are ammonia, and its atmosphere is a noxious goop you couldn't even see out of.

Incorrect! Titans seas are made of liquid hydrocarbons, not ammonia.

[Bladi]

The characteristics of laythe are :

Its tidally locked (like oure Moon , so its possible)

It has an "thick" atmosphere (like Saturnmoon - Titan , so it's possible)

The gravity is a bit like the earth (but Venus is similarly , and it's possible that a venus like planet orbit a planet like Jupiter , so it's possible)

The good temperatures on Laythe are from radiation from Jool (so it would be if radiation is in the game) , and a gas planet can have much radiation , and maybe the system of KSP is so builded that Jool is a radioistotope planet , its possible cause Kerbol is a "M class star" (so it's possible)

Can a planet/moon with so much radiation in "neighborhood" , can have an Atmosphere without that blowing away ?(yes cause if it have a magnetic field only the warming in the atmosphere are coming on Laythe , so its possible).

Can a planet/moon with that kind of star and a radiational gas planet in "neighborhood" , have oxigen (yes , but it's rare , so it's possible)

And sand and water? (yes but it's rare to , but it's possible)

so we can say that a planet/moon like Layth can exist in real life , but it's to 99% very very very rarely.

But yes!

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

I'd be more concerned with the fact that a body with such low gravity could have an oxygen based atmosphere.

[Brotoro]

I'd be more concerned with the fact that a body with such low gravity could have an oxygen based atmosphere.

But Laythe does not have a low surface gravity. It's surface gravity is over 5.5 times that of Ganymede or Titan, and even more than double the surface gravity of Mars.

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

Which really makes no sense due to the fact that Laythe has radius of 400 km and Mars has a radius of 3,396 km. With real world physics Laythe would be impossible even if it was solid lead.

[Cryocasm]

Which really makes no sense due to the fact that Laythe has radius of 400 km and Mars has a radius of 3,396 km. With real world physics Laythe would be impossible even if it was solid lead.

You need to try Osmium, it weighs in at 22.62 g/cm³. The densest element mankind knows of. Maybe Laythe has a gravitational artifact.

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

You need to try Osmium, it weighs in at 22.62 g/cm³. The densest element mankind knows of. Maybe Laythe has a gravitational artifact.

Or KSP has its own physics laws because they don't follow real world physics when it comes to mass and gravity.

Kerbin has a radius of 600 km, is it made of Osmium to get the Earthly 9.8m/s²?

[Cryocasm]

Or KSP has its own physics laws because they don't follow real world physics when it comes to mass and gravity.

Kerbin has a radius of 600 km, is it made of Osmium to get the Earthly 9.8m/s²?

Mathematically it "only" needs to be x11 more dense, following the /11 smaller radius. Earth's density is 5.5 g/cm³, hence Kerbin only needs 60.5 g/cm³. This could be attainable if the core of Kerbin consisted of a superheavy synthetic element, like Unbihexium.