Sentences with phrase «fractured ice crust»

Not exact matches

One explanation is that the long fractures in the ice crust experience more stress as gravitational tidal forces push and pull on the moon and so open vents at larger distances from Jupiter.

As this water moves through rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and pushes through fractures in the overlying ice to form reservoirs closer the moon's surface, where it is expelled into space when the outermost layer of the crust cracks open and the resulting depressurization of these reservoirs causes water vapor and ice particles to shoot out in the observed plumes.

However, seismic imaging has shown that mantle heat in this region may reach the ice sheet through a rift, that is, a fracture in Earth's crust such as appears in Africa's Great Rift Valley.