Thesis Defense: 'Regional Scale Tectonic Features at Argadnel Regio and Agenor Linea, Europa: Evidence in Support of a Plate Tectonic Paradigm'

Please join M.S. candidate in Applied Geological Sciences, Charlene Detelich, for a public thesis defense via Zoom beginning at 11 a.m. July 12.

• Zoom meeting link
• Meeting ID: 884 8465 0091
• Passcode: 646290

Description: Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, has an anomalously young surface age (~90 million years old) and an extensively fractured surface. Conventional models for tectonic features on Europa have invoked global-scale tidal forcings as the mechanisms responsible for fracturing the icy shell. I examined a multitude of tectonic feature types, orientations, and ages across a broad region of Europa's anti-jovian hemisphere and found fractures that don't align with stresses from conventional global tidal stress models but instead appear to represent distributed shearing potentially related to plate tectonics, which would make Europa the only world in our solar system (besides Earth) with plate tectonics.

July Archive