13SIMULATING AN ALIEN VOLCANO
Quick! Name the most volcanically active body in the solar system! If you thought Earth, then you’d be mistaken—it’s Io (“EYE-oh”), one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons.
The first evidence of volcanism on Io came in 1979, when Voyager 1 made its famous fly-by of the Jovian system. But the spectacular photographs it recorded were no real surprise. Astrophysicist Stan Peale and two coauthors had already published this result based on models of Io’s interior.
Computer modeling is a powerful tool for understanding nature and making predictions. Here’s the general workflow:
- Gather data.
- Analyze, interpret, and integrate ...
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