Magma oceans and enhanced volcanism on TRAPPIST-1 planets due to induction heating

K. G. Kislyakova, L. Noack, C. P. Johnstone, V. V. Zaitsev, L. Fossati, H. Lammer, M. L. Khodachenko, P. Odert, M. Guedel
(Submitted on 24 Oct 2017)

Low-mass M stars are plentiful in the Universe and often host small, rocky planets detectable with the current instrumentation. Recently, seven small planets have been discovered orbiting the ultracool dwarf TRAPPIST-1\cite{Gillon16,Gillon17}. We examine the role of electromagnetic induction heating of these planets, caused by the star’s rotation and the planet’s orbital motion. If the stellar rotation and magnetic dipole axes are inclined with respect to each other, induction heating can melt the upper mantle and enormously increase volcanic activity, sometimes producing a magma ocean below the planetary surface. We show that induction heating leads the three innermost planets, one of which is in the habitable zone, to either evolve towards a molten mantle planet, or to experience increased outgassing and volcanic activity, while the four outermost planets remain mostly unaffected.

Comments:    Published in Nature Astronomy; this https URL
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
DOI:    10.1038/s41550-017-0284-0
Cite as:    arXiv:1710.08761 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1710.08761v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Kristina Kislyakova
[v1] Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:31:47 GMT (659kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08761