Meeting Location and Date
We are happy to announce the fourth Ocean Worlds meeting scheduled for May 21–22, 2019 at Universities Space Research Association Headquarters at 7178 Columbia Gateway Dr., Columbia, Maryland.
Purpose and Scope
Many of the icy moons and dwarf planets in the outer solar system are known or hypothesized to host subterranean liquid-water oceans. These worlds may also have liquid trapped within their icy lithospheres. In the larger bodies, fluids are also suspected within and between lithospheric layers of high-pressure ice. The geodynamics of these ice lithospheres may be influenced by the freezing and melting of water and associated impurities (e.g., salts and organic compounds), and interactions at ocean-ice interfaces may influence circulation in the oceans on local or global scales.
In this, the fourth meeting in the Ocean Worlds series, we focus on the ice-water interactions occurring within ocean worlds beyond Earth, from a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspective. Considering them in detail should lead to new hypotheses testable by future spacecraft missions. As with past Ocean Worlds meetings, a primary motivation is to engender a cross-fertilization of ideas and expertise by soliciting contributions from both the Ocean Sciences and Planetary Sciences communities. Consequently, contributions are invited that address any aspects of this broad ice-water interaction theme, across the Planetary and Ocean Science fields, including geophysics, hydrogeology, geochemistry, and microbiology.
