Boiling oceans may sculpt the surfaces of small icy moons

Small, icy moons might be boiling under their surface.

Many moons in the outer solar system are thought to harbor subsurface oceans beneath their icy crusts. New computer simulations, reported November 24 in Nature Astronomy, suggest that changes in the thickness of these icy shells can cause water in the underlying oceans to boil at low temperatures. This boiling may lead to geologic features, such as the ridgelike formations called coronae seen on Uranus’ moon Miranda.

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