Seismic Signals from Waves on Titan's Seas

Seismology is the main tool for inferring the deep interior structures of Earth and potentially also of other planetary bodies in the solar system.

Terrestrial seismology is influenced by the presence of the ocean-generated microseismic signal, which sets a lower limit on the earthquake detection capabilities but also provides a strong energy source to infer the interior structure on scales from local to continental. Titan is the only other place in the solar system with permanent surface liquids and future lander missions there might carry a seismic package.

Therefore, the presence of microseisms would be of great benefit for interior studies, but also for detecting storm-generated waves on the lakes remotely. We estimated the strength of microseismic signals on Titan, based on wind speeds predicted from modeled global circulation models interior structure. We find that storms of more than 2 m/s wind speed, would create a signal that is globally observable with a high-quality broadband sensor and observable to a thousand kilometer distance with a space-ready seismometer, such as the InSight instruments currently operating on the surface of Mars.

Simon C. Stähler, Mark P. Panning, Céline Hadziioannou, Ralph Lorenz, Steve Vance, Knut Klingbeil, Sharon Kedar
(Submitted on 27 May 2019)

Comments: 24 pages, 6 figures
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
MSC classes: 86-08
Cite as: arXiv:1905.11251 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1905.11251v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Simon Stähler
[v1] Mon, 27 May 2019 14:13:26 UTC (3,277 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.11251
Astrobiology