Mimas is a small moon of Saturn. It is most famous for being the inspiration for the Death Star in the popular movie Star Wars.
But from this day it will be famous for refuting mainstream climate science.
How you ask?
Well … let’s examine its external energy sources:
1) Insolation. The insolaton at Mimas should be approximately the same as that for Saturn.
2) Saturn. Radiation received from Saturn should equal the emission from Saturn diluted by the square of the radius of Saturn divided by distance from Saturn to Mimas and divided by 4.
NASA’s Facts Sheets (Saturn, Saturn Satellites) provides us all the numbers we need.
Apply standard formulas:
1) 14.82 * (1 - 0.6) / 4 = 1.482 W/m²
2) (5.67e-8)*(81)^4 * (54364/185539)^2 / 4 = 0.0524 W/m²The total is 1.5344 W/m²
Let’s convert that back to a temperature (assuming emissivity = 1, by [Howett 2003]):
(1.5344/5.67e-8)^0.25 = 72.1According to mainstream climate science, only special gases in the atmosphere can boost the surface temperature beyond what external radiation (the sun) alone can do. On Earth, they claim these gases boost the surface temperature by ~33°K.
Mimas has no greenhouse gases or even an atmosphere, so its average temperature should never exceed 72.1 K.
But in reality …
It looks like PacMan is powering the Death Star and the surface temperature is boosted from 2 to 24 K beyond what external radiation alone can do. There is nothing below 74 K?
Isn’t it obvious that Mimas is geothermally boosted?
Neither the greenhouse effect theory of mainstream climate science or the atmospheric pressure theory of Nikolov & Zeller, et al can explain this!
Nothing else can explain PacMan and the thermal boost other than geothermal.
And if a tiny planetoid like Mimas has its own oddly distributed internal energy, maybe the Earth, which is 158,730 times more massive could as well?
Think!
Love, -Zoe
Zoe's Insights 
Nikolov & Zeller only deal with bodies that have a significant atmosphere. Most Moons apart from Titan have no atmosphere, so their theory is not applicable to Mimas.
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Mimas is ice covered. If the geothermal rose to 275K, ice would evaporate and a tiny atmosphere would form. N&Z would then find a pressure enhancement ratio and claim it was the atmosphere that made the surface hot. Seems backwards to me.
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Antipodal focusing?
If Mimas’ giant crater was caused by an impact, the energy released would have travelled through the moon and come to a focus on the opposite side.
In the case of Earth, the Deccan Traps are roughly antipodal to the Chixculub crater.
Could this be the source of the hotspots responsible for Large Igneous Provinces and the Yellowstone caldera?
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Magnetic induction from Saturn? Mimas suppossedly is geologically active (steam vents).
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Maybe!
Some suspect there is an ocean (water) 25-30km below the surface.
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A part of me hopes that people will solve this in my lifetime. 🙂
The more reasonably part says that money could be spent way more efficiently.
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First hi-res images capable of revealing Mimas’ crater structure was acquired in 1979. Star Wars premiered in 1977. Perhaps Mimas’ creator was inpired by Star Wars.
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Completely wrong. First photos of Herschel crater were acquired by NASA in 1980, not 1979.
P. S. This post is in the Humor category, because half is funny and half is true.
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“According to mainstream climate science, only special gases in the atmosphere can boost the surface temperature beyond what external radiation (the sun) alone can do.”
Wildly wrong. There also is internal energy making its way to the surface: internal energy left over from gravitational collapse that forms a body, internal energy from radioactive decay, and energy generated by the push and pull of nearby bodies (Saturn in this case) on the interior. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103521005091
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Yes, that’s the point
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“Isn’t it obvious that Mimas is geothermally boosted? Neither the greenhouse effect theory of mainstream climate science or the atmospheric pressure theory of Nikolov & Zeller, et al can explain this!”
No scientist, anywhere, ever, has claimed that greenhouse gases explain the temperature of Mimas. Quite the contrary. Mainstream scientists have a good handle on geothermal contributions to Mimas’s temperature. They have an even better handle on geothermal contributions to Earth’s temperature, as evidenced by a vast literature spanning many many decades.
Your original post is in no way relevant to the question of whether greenhouse gases contribute to the Earth’s temperature. Not just wrong–irrelevant, pointless, beside the point, has no bearing.
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