1. If the Earth had no water and was a perfectly spherical rock, the gravity of the Moon, and to a lesser extent the Sun, would deform the sphere slightly. That deformation is called the “solid tide.” For example, twice a day, the solid tide lifts and lowers the foundation of your home slightly, relative to the center of the Earth.
2. “... the solid Earth tide can account for displacements up to ~0.4 m [1.31 feet]” C. Watson et al., “The Impact of Solid Earth Tide Models on GPS Coordinate and Tropospheric Time Series,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, 22 April 2006, p. L08306-1.
3. “Tidal effects could reach up to 30 cm [0.98 feet] in Denmark and Greenland ...” Guochang Xu and Per Knudsen, “Earth Tide Effects on Kinematic/Static GPS Positioning in Denmark and Greenland,” Physics and Chemistry of the Earth (Part A: Solid Earth and Geodesy), Vol. 25, 2000, p. 409.
4. An additional amount of heat would have been generated in each pillar’s expansion half-cycle. For simplicity, and to be conservative, this heat will be neglected.
Alternatively, the heat generated during a complete compression-expansion cycle would equal the mechanical hysteresis losses, sometimes called the tidal dissipation. If the pillars were purely elastic (or could be considered as a perfect spring), the hysteresis losses would be zero. Because granite is partially elastic, the hysteresis losses must be experimentally determined for the particular (but unfortunately unknown) geometry of the granite pillars. For rocks at tidal frequencies, tidal dissipations of 50% are often used.
Once the flood began, that energy would have been converted to kinetic energy, because the SCW would have expanded enormously (and cooled) as it flowed in the direction of decreasing pressures, toward the base of the fountains and then up into the fountains. (As explained in “Three Common Questions” on page 129, a remarkable characteristic of supercritical fluids is that a small decrease in pressure produces a gigantic increase in volume—and cooling.
5. “The question arises as to the present state of the H2O mantle [on Europa]—is it primarily [liquid] water or ice? Calculations of the transport of heat by subsolidus convection in ice indicate that it would be completely frozen if normal solar system abundances of radioactive elements were the only heat sources present.” P. Cassen et al., “Is There Liquid Water on Europa?” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 6, September 1979, p. 731.
u “... radiogenic heating alone cannot explain the huge heat power observed at the south pole [of Enceladus].” G. Tobie et al., “Solid Tidal Friction above a Liquid Water Reservoir as the Origin of the South Pole Hotspot on Enceladus,” Icarus, Vol. 196, August 2008, p. 642.
6. “The heating rate in the ice crust is greater than in a completely solid body because the unsupported crust is subject to greater deformation.” P. Cassen et al., p. 731.
u “...only interior models with a liquid water layer at depth can explain the observed magnitude of dissipation rate and its particular location at the south pole.” G. Tobie et al., p. 642.
u “... when a globally decoupling liquid layer is included, the total dissipation power is strongly enhanced and it reproduces the observed [heat flow].” Ibid., p. 644.
u “... models with no internal liquid layer cannot generate a hotspot at the south pole.” Ibid., pp. 644-645.
u “The only known way Enceladus could generate heat is for Saturn to raise tides in solid parts of the moon the way Earth’s moon raises tides in the oceans.” Richard A. Kerr, “Enceladus Now Looks Wet, So It May Be Alive!” Science, Vol. 332, 10 June 2011, p. 1259.
7. Jupiter’s moon, Io, has many volcanoes, some ejecting material 500 kilometers into space—farther than from any other volcanoes in the solar system. Tidal pumping also generates Io’s heat, but the ejected material is sulfur dioxide, not water.
8. For example, see Steven W. Squyres et al., “Liquid Water and Active Resurfacing on Europa,” Nature, Vol. 301, 20 January 1983, pp. 225–226.