Jupiter's Moon Io, Continues To Puzzle Scientific Researchers

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | 5/04/2004 | Creation-Evolution Headlines

[bondserv]

Io, Io, It’s Off to Work We Go    05/04/2004
The innermost large moon of Jupiter, Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.  About the size of our moon but no more than a speck of light in small telescopes, it caused a sensation when Galileo first glimpsed it and the other three major satellites of Jupiter in 1610.  Back then, it upset tradition about the hierarchy of the heavens; today, it is upsetting tradition about the age and composition of planetary bodies.  The volcanos were first observed by the Voyagers in 1979, and have been monitored with earth instruments since then, but were most clearly and dramatically revealed by the Galileo spacecraft between 1995 and 2003.  Now that its seven-year orbital tour of the Jupiter system is history, planetary scientists are trying to come to grips with the startling findings from all four large moons.  The May issue of Icarus is devoted to the puzzles of Io, whose volcanos dwarf those on earth.  “Io After Galileo” provides a status report, a state of the moon address, before it’s off to work they go for more data mining and problem solving.
    Most of the articles are descriptive of the dramatic and colorful volcanos seen in the photographic images: Tupan Patera, a lava lake 47 miles across and half a mile deep; Tvashtar Catena, a chain of craters that displayed a 240-mile-high plume and 30-mile-long fire fountain; Thor, an eruption that reached 310 miles high; Amirami, the largest lava flow in the solar system; mountains towering up to 36,000 feet (Everest is 29,000); and much more.  The fact that such activity could exist on a small moon that should be mostly frozen by now is calling into question traditional theories about the dynamics of planetary interiors.  Io’s lavas, for instance, are generally much hotter than the basaltic lavas on earth.  It appears they contain heavy elements like iron and magnesium (called ultramafic lavas).  Theory demands that the heavy elements sink into the interior; how can these heavy elements erupt out onto the surface?  What drives the incessant heat flow that is as active at the poles as at the equator, and shows no cooling down during the night?
    The first-order explanation is that Io is tidally pumped by its orbital resonance between Jupiter and Europa.  Like a rubber ball repeatedly squeezed, Io’s tides generate heat and that heat has to come out.  Volcanic activity was actually predicted on this principle shortly before Voyager 1 arrived.  The problem is that there is more heat flow – by an order of magnitude – than most models of tidal flexing predict.  Veener, Matson, Johnson, Davies and Blaney¹ have made the problem worse in their paper by recalculating the heat flow from thermal anomalies and adding in the extra amount detected from polar sources, arriving at a weighted average of 2.5 watts per square meter – “well above that predicted by most theories of tidal dissipation in Jupiter and Io.”  Considering all the heat emitted by cooling lavas over the entire surface, Matson in an earlier paper had set an upper bound of 13.5 watts per square meter.  This is nearly five times the heat coming out of Yellowstone’s thermal basins.
    The final paper by Keszthelyi, Jaeger, Turtle, Milazzo and Radebaugh² is entitled “A post-Galileo view of Io’s interior.”  In proposing their “mushy magma ocean” model, in which the interior has no solid core but is mushy all way through, they seem to be meekly standing up with bulls-eyes painted on their backs, waiting for the inevitable criticisms: how can the tall mountains exist?  How does the model prevent runaway melting?  How do you stop the magma from escaping too fast?  How do you prevent differentiation?  More complex models will be required, they meekly admit, and “Such future work may show that the mushy magma ocean model will need to be further refined, or even rejected.”  They point to previous critiques: “ Stevenson (2002) predicts that a mush zone >20 km deep would be unstable over geologic timescales.  Another issue is that, if the temperature of the mantle were to change significantly on a time scale of less than 10⁶ [one million] years, then our model for stresses in the lithosphere would be inaccurate (McKinnon et al., 2001).”  Hey, it’s only a model, a “useful starting point for future discussions.”  So Io, it’s off to work we go.

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¹Glenn J. Veeder, Dennis L. Matson, Torrence V. Johnson, Ashley G. Davies and Diana L. Blaney, “The polar contribution to the heat flow of Io,” Icarus Volume 169, Issue 1, May 2004, Pages 264-270, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2003.11.016.
²Laszlo Keszthelyi, Windy L. Jaeger, Elizabeth P. Turtle, Moses Milazzob and Jani Radebaugh, “A post-Galileo view of Io’s interior,” Icarus Volume 169, Issue 1, May 2004, Pages 271-286; doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2004.01.005.

One model they never seem to consider is that Io might not be as old as they assume.  Did you catch the phrase “geologic timescales”?  That’s code for 4.6 billion years.  If the model does not fit “geologic timescales” then the model must be tweaked till it does.  4.6 billion years is the golden parameter, the figure that must not be altered, because Darwinian evolution depends on it.
    Io might be considered just a special case if it were alone in displaying recent surface activity.  Actually, most of the moons in the solar system possess young-looking features that defy long ages.  Europa may be gushing out water even today, Ganymede indicates recent cryovolcanism against expectations and has a global magnetic field, and Callisto shows signs of erosion and has an induced magnetic field.  Tidal flexing is not available to explain these features.  Same at Saturn: Enceladus shows widespread resurfacing and may have currently active water volcanos, Dione and Rhea show vast fields of surface frost, Iapetus is half-coated in dark material, and Titan has an atmosphere that is quickly eroding.  At Uranus, Ariel and Titania show resurfacing and Miranda is a mosaic of old-looking and young-looking features.  Even as far out as Neptune, the coldest body in the solar system – Triton, at 300 below zero – has active nitrogen geysers and few craters, looking like much of its surface as been reworked recently.  Back at home, our own moon exhibits transient lunar phenomena, short-lived bright or gaseous emissions from an interior that should long ago have solidified if as old as claimed.  Io is forcing planetary geologists to question their assumptions.  Would that one of them would break rank and question the assumption of 4.6 billion years.  But that would be aiding and abetting the enemy, the young-earth creationists.  No respectable scientist would want to be caught dead in such a trespass, or risk offending the Darwin Party.
    Check out this issue of Icarus.  Look at the pictures and read the descriptions with a mind freed of evolutionary presuppositions.  Where does the evidence lead?

[VadeRetro]

And that helps your case how?

You were claiming that the fossils in the sequence picture were "all the Evos have." That was wrong. It helps my case to point out that there's a constellation of other data, about what one would expect if the Earth were old and humans had gradually evolved from apes. So that's what I did. Is it clearer now?

1470 is skull F, not even the one I asked you about. That's the one you're talking about because that's the one you had another article about. Once again on this thread, no matter what you are asked, the answer is another article from AiG or ICR. Are you reading or key-word scanning? OK, let's pretend I said "F."

A closer look at 1470.

From here:

If 1470 was an ape, it would be a truly extraordinary one. The brain is far larger than that of any ape, with the possible exception of extremely large male gorillas. The braincase is far more rounded and gracile than that of any ape, and the brain has a human rather than an apelike pattern (Tobias 1987).

...

"ER 1470 is Homo in many respects and it has a phenomenally large brain for its time."

...

Lubenow [creationist writer: "Bones of Contention," etc.--VR] concludes that 1470 is fully human.

It may have been reconstructed in a somewhat more apelike manner in the 90s. (I'm too lazy to check what really happened. That doesn't mean for one second that I believe the creationist spin.) That doesn't make it an ape. It's in genus Homo. What would that ordinarily mean to you as a taxon-lawyering creationist? I'm not arguing that the classification overrides the data. I'm saying the data still point to something more humanlike than any modern ape and more apelike than any modern human. Otherwise it would be in genus Australopithecus, where some have argued for placing it. That's the sign of a transitional; it straddles the borderline. But no non-idiot has argued for placement in genus Pan, or Pongo, or whatever.

In your flailing, you've thrown at least one article by Lubenow up on this thread, citing him as an authority that every fossil offered as part of "the hominid progression" is either fully ape or fully human. But you're saying F is an ape. Why did you cite as authoritative the opinion of a dumb cluck who can't tell a plain old ape from a plain old human?

[VadeRetro]

Of course, any way you go on 1470, half of the creationist community will agree with you and half will say you're nuts.

Creationist Classifications of Hominid Fossils

Specimen		Cuozzo (1998)	Gish (1985)	Mehlert (1996)	Bowden (1981) Menton (1988) Taylor (1992) Gish (1979)	Baker (1976) Taylor and Van Bebber (1995)	Taylor (1996) Lubenow (1992)
	ER 1813 (510 cc)	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape
	Java (940 cc)	Ape	Ape	Human	Ape	Ape	Human
	Peking (915- 1225 cc)	Ape	Ape	Human	Ape	Human	Human
	ER 1470 (750 cc)	Ape	Ape	Ape	Human	Human	Human
	ER 3733 (850 cc)	Ape	Human	Human	Human	Human	Human
	WT 15000 (880 cc)	Ape	Human	Human	Human	Human	Human

Once again with feeling from here.

Funny how it's that hard to tell an ape from a human, given that the kinds are so immutable.

[VadeRetro]

1470 is skull F, not even the one I asked you about. That's the one you're talking about because that's the one you had another article about. Once again on this thread, no matter what you are asked, the answer is another article from AiG or ICR. Are you reading or key-word scanning? OK, let's pretend I said "F."

But I mentioned Gish reversing himself on Rudy/1470 twice already on this thread. You were answering that. My bad.

[balrog666]

Beat away!

[VadeRetro]

[Shatner voice] Will he make it, Bones?

[balrog666]

He's dead, Jim! And so is the thread!

[VadeRetro]

Don't worry! The Next Generation will be back and won't have learned a thing.