# Relevance of Tidal Heating on Large TNOs

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how tidal heating influences the potential for subsurface liquid water in large Trans-Neptunian Objects, highlighting its significance alongside radiogenic heating and its implications for habitability.

## Contribution

It demonstrates that tidal heating can be a significant heat source in TNOs, sometimes working together with radiogenic heating, and explores conditions under which both processes occur.

## Key findings

- Tidal heating can rival radionuclide decay in heat contribution.
- Tidal activity can bring subsurface liquid water closer to the surface.
- Strong tidal heating and long-lived tides can coexist in certain scenarios.

## Abstract

We examine the relevance of tidal heating for large Trans-Neptunian Objects, with a focus on its potential to melt and maintain layers of subsurface liquid water. Depending on their past orbital evolution, tidal heating may be an important part of the heat budget for a number of discovered and hypothetical TNO systems and may enable formation of, and increased access to, subsurface liquid water. Tidal heating induced by the process of despinning is found to be particularly able to compete with heating due to radionuclide decay in a number of different scenarios. In cases where radiogenic heating alone may establish subsurface conditions for liquid water, we focus on the extent by which tidal activity lifts the depth of such conditions closer to the surface. While it is common for strong tidal heating and long lived tides to be mutually exclusive, we find this is not always the case, and highlight when these two traits occur together.