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This has been puzziling me for a while now. Where does the energy in tidal stress come from? Does the Moon/Planets kinetic motion get converted into the energy, or is it the gravitational potential? It can't be that the energy's just appearing.
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Ultimately, the energy comes from the slowing of the Earth's rotation as the Earth resists the gravitationally-induced tides.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking for details.
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So... the heating of Io comes from jupiters rotation?, a source that will probably outlive the sun. That provides us with an energy source for the outer solar system.
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So... the heating of Io comes from jupiters rotation?
Well, the heating of Io should come from the rotation of Io in Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field. And probably early on it did, but then the internal friction that generates the heating eventually caused Io to be “tidally locked” to Jupiter (i.e., rotate exactly once per orbit so that the induced tidal bulge doesn’t have to move like it does on Earth). If Io’s orbit were exactly circular, then there would be no heating, but because it is elliptical, it still gets “squeezed” each orbit by changing gravitational forces and that is what generates the heat.
My understanding is that Io’s interaction with Jupiter’s other moons is what keeps its orbit elliptical. I’m not sure how stable that is – I’m sure it can last for millions of years, but I don’t know about billions. It’s an interesting question.
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So the problem of where the energy would come from that far from the Sun is solved.
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So the problem of where the energy would come from that far from the Sun is solved.
Well, at Io. But it's kind of a unique situation. And I don't know how you'd take advantage of it on a smaller scale with some sort of artificial generator that is powered by tidal stresses.
I think fusion (and later antimatter) is the way to go for the outer solar system. The gas giants have lots of Deuterium and He3 for fuel.
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The temp. differences at Europa and other moons could also be exploited.
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The temp. differences at Europa and other moons could also be exploited.
Possibly at Europa. I think you'll have a much harder time with any of the smaller moons ( which is most of them ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_so … _by_radius )
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But at Enecladus at Saturn...
Plentiful Water Ice, geysers that can be ridden off the moon... I could see that moon being colonized. The most importent resource in space will be water, followed by Carbon.
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