Potential, tide-raising

All of the activity on Europa is driven by tides, so it is worth considering what we know about the amplitude of these tides. According to Tidal theory, Europa s figure is distorted by the tide-raising potential of Jupiter according to... 

An extended, 3D body will feel a differential potential exerted on it by a neighboring mass (Figure 1). This tide-raising potential can be written as... 

Figure 9. The function k(r) derived in Appendix B, describes how the perturbing potentials vary within the body. When k(r) = 1 the perturbing potentials are as strong as the tide-raising potential. Also negative values of k(r) reenforce the effects of the tide-raising potential while positive k(r) counter the effects of the tide-raising potential.

Also these results show the elastic response to a tide-raising potential. If a given body were to experience a substantial tide, the response would actually take some time. A real body would actually behave... 

On the other hand, we must bear in mind that no real planet fits the assumptions of Love s classical problem discussed here, with uniform density and uniform elastic properties immediately prior to application of the tide-raising potential. Real planets will certainly not be uniform. Nevertheless, the limits of parameters within which instabilities may occur are not known, and the possibility of instabilities may be worth investigating in greater detail. Such an investigation is currently underway, using numerical and analytical modeling approaches. 

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