ScienceExplain Like I'm 5Beginner
Ocean Worlds of the Solar System course icon

Ocean Worlds of the Solar System

Like Duolingo, but for Ocean Worlds of the Solar System. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

70 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Otto the Otter
Ocean Worlds of the Solar System
with Otto the Otter
70
Levels
8
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Ocean Worlds of the Solar System

  • The traditional Goldilocks Zone only accounts for surface water warmed by starlight
  • Moons in the cold outer solar system can host liquid oceans beneath ice shells
  • Thick ice shells act as insulation for the water below
  • Internal heat prevents the entire ocean from freezing solid
  • The expansion of the habitable zone beyond orbital distance
  • How internal heat maintains liquid oceans in deep space
  • Tidal forces from a massive planet generate friction inside a moon
  • Friction from gravitational tugging creates enough heat to melt ice
  • Water transports nutrients and chemicals within a biological system
  • Chemical reactions for life happen more easily in a liquid medium than in ice or gas
  • The role of gravity in generating heat for ocean worlds
  • Conditions for subsurface oceans are much easier to meet than Earth-like surface conditions
  • Icy moons with internal heat are likely more numerous than planets in the narrow Goldilocks Zone
  • Why liquid water is the primary target in the search for life
  • The prevalence of ocean worlds compared to Earth-like planets
  • Ice at cryogenic temperatures behaves like rigid rock
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Ocean Worlds of the Solar System the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Oceans Hiding in the Dark

Where can we find liquid water in the freezing, dark parts of our solar system?

Get it right to open this lesson and 69 more in the app.

Course map

Where Ocean Worlds of the Solar System takes you

Journey beyond Earth to discover the hidden, liquid-water oceans locked beneath the icy shells of moons and dwarf planets. Explore the chemistry, gravity, and extreme environments that make these distant worlds the best places to search for alien life.

  1. 1

    Beyond Earth's Shores

    • Redefining the Habitable Zone
    • The Architecture of a Hidden Sea
  2. 2

    Detecting the Unseen

    • Gravity and the Art of the Wobble
    • Magnetic Echoes in the Deep
    • Catching a Plume
  3. 3

    The Recipe for Life

    • Tidal Heating: The Gravity Furnace
    • Hydrothermal Vents and Rock-Water Chemistry
  4. 4

    Europa: Jupiter’s Icy Mystery

    • The Chaos Terrain
    • The Radiation Gauntlet
  5. 5

    Enceladus: The Tiger Stripes

    • The South Pole Sprays
    • Tasting Organics in Space
  6. 6

    Titan: The Weird One

    • Lakes of Natural Gas
    • The Deep Water Layer
  7. 7

    The Distant Cousins

    • Ganymede and Callisto
    • Triton and the Dwarf Planets
  8. 8

    The Search for Life

    • Biosignatures and Detection
    • Planetary Protection
    • Future Explorers: Subs and Sails

8 sections · 18 units · 70 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
Explain Like I'm 5

Ocean Worlds of the Solar System is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

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Start Ocean Worlds of the Solar System today.

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