Rapid temperature changes and the early activity on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

TL;DR

This study uses a thermophysical model to show that rapid temperature changes in the shadowed neck region of comet 67P are likely driving early activity through thermal cracking, explaining localized ice presence and activity onset.

Contribution

It demonstrates that shadow-induced rapid temperature variations can cause thermal cracking, contributing to early comet activity and local ice preservation.

Findings

Shadowed regions experience fastest temperature variations.

Rapid temperature changes likely cause thermal cracking.

Thermal cracking may operate faster on concavities of airless bodies.

Abstract

The so-called "early activity" of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been observed to originate mostly in parts of the concave region or "neck" between its two lobes. Since activity is driven by the sublimation of volatiles, this is a puzzling result because this area is less exposed to the Sun and is therefore expected to be cooler on average (Sierks et al. 2015). We used a thermophysical model that takes into account thermal inertia, global self-heating, and shadowing, to compute surface temperatures of the comet. We found that, for every rotation in the August--December 2014 period, some parts of the neck region undergo the fastest temperature variations of the comet's surface precisely because they are shadowed by their surrounding terrains. Our work suggests that these fast temperature changes are correlated to the early activity of the comet, and we put forward the hypothesis that erosion related to thermal cracking is operating at a high rate on the neck region due to these rapid temperature variations. This may explain why the neck contains some ice --as opposed to most other parts of the surface (Capaccioni et al. 2015)-- and why it is the main source of the comet's early activity (Sierks et al. 2015). In a broader context, these results indicate that thermal cracking can operate faster on atmosphereless bodies with significant concavities than implied by currently available estimates (Delbo' et al. 2014).