Io Has Geysers, Lakes And Snow

An article this week in the journal Science , as reported in this CNN story, reveals that in addition to volcanos, Io is also home to vast mountain ranges, lakes of lava and sulfuric geysers up to 50 miles high. Photographs and thermal measurements from the keep-on-chuggin' Galileo enabled the discoveries. See the NASA press release for slightly more detail, as well as for newly released images (May 18th) from Galileo. (You can read the full Science article here, but it requires either a subscription or a fee.)

Comments

Re:Volcanoes

[Barbarian]

The amount spent studying space is small in comparison to that wasted on activities like professional wrestling.

The point of studying it is because it's there to study, and because planetary behavior is important for our understanding of the universe. If I recall correctly, the land tides on Io are something like 300 ft every day, which is why it's so active.

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Re:The C;larke Connection

[Grant Elliott]

I don't think you understand. Arthur C. Clark predicted almost every recent discovery made by the Galileo probe. In fact, in the prologue of 2061 (written before Galileo was even launched), Clarke states that he nearly waited for the Galileo probe to reach Jupiter before writing the book. The Challenger disaster pushed back the launch, and Clarke went ahead with the book. Nearly everything he said has since been proven including ice on Europa, volcanoes and sulfur vents on Io, and the Jupiter-Io Flux. One of the most bizzare predictions is that a huge diamond exists at the core of Jupiter (I believe this was in 2010). The Jupiter-Io Flux seemed absurdly unlikely too...

Re:Cool

[Graymalkin]

On Io geologic processes that take thousands and millions of years on Earth happen in a month or year's time. It's like watching a fast motion movie on geology. Thats a good thing if you live somewhere like Japan or California with alot of fault activity or Hawai'i with its volcanos.

Re:The C;larke Connection

[gad_zuki!]

Clarke was just following accepted theories on the make-up of planets, he's not some visionary. Look at his 'in the year 2000' lists.

Re:intelligent comments please

[gad_zuki!]

Ah yes, to live in the humorless world you propose. Will there be nickel suicide booths too?

Re:ever will be a long time then

[Graymalkin]

Frogs and turtles are as complex as humans yet several species of each are frozen during the winter time as lakes and riverbeds freeze over. Oh well, I suppose by complexity you mean bigger animals.

Re:The Clarke Connection

[Captain Nitpick]

So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

Scientific American, February 2000, The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons page 43, 44, 46-47.

"In short, Io is tightly linked to the giant planet by what amounts to the largest electric circuit in the solar system."

The text of the article is available is available online, including a diagram of the Io flux tube and plasma torus.

Another Cool Tidbit From Science

[hbo]

From Science:

Io flybys occurred on 11 October 1999 (I24), 26 November 1999 (I25), and 22 February 2000 (I27). Both I24 and I25 suffered from spacecraft or instrument anomalies that eliminated or degraded some observations, but more than 100 useful images with resolutions from ~10 to 500 m/pixel were returned. I27 was a fully successful encounter, but much of the data have not yet been returned or analyzed.

So the best science data may be yet to come!

"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers

RE: Life..

[adpowers]

Am I wrong, or is this going to be enough to send a probe?

Actually they wouldn't send a probe there. One spacecraft was going to crash land there but they altered its course. They did this so that it wouldn't infect the pristine moon. It wouldn't be worth desturbing the delicate balance of life that could possibly live there.

Re: Life..

[Graymalkin]

Infect Io? Dude, are you a fucking moron. Think Europa which is a few thousand miles out from there and you'll be closer to the truth.

Re:It's like MP3s on your HD.

[Graymalkin]

Or start a nice sized war to wipe the slate for a few generations.

Re:Loki, Norse god of fire, illusion, mischief

[Graymalkin]

Norse for of mischief. You're thinking Logi, don't feel too bad.

Metric/Imperial measurements still plague NASA

[DrClownius]

From the NASA press release:
"and mountains that may split and slide
sideways for hundreds of kilometers, or miles."

Hmmm... I'm not sure what to think of that. I guess they're just trying to keep their bases covered?

Devil's advocate (was Re:Spores could work)

[kjeldar]

Life always finds a way here on Earth, but we're post-eukaryotic. We have all these multicellular organisms acting as vectors for unicellular ones and creating all kinds of chaos in general, which ensures that unicellular organisms will have chance upon chance to spread to any corner of the plant where they can then evolve in happiness.

It seems that the real trick is to get the unicellulars to arise in the first place, which would be no mean feat in a hell like Io. Once you've got that, then the next trick is to get multicellulars to act as vectors for your unicellulars. Then you've got yourself a big percolating evolving planet. *grin*

Re:Volcano's sustain life

[Jovian]

ok, IANAG (I am not a geologist), but isn't the core of the earth hot simply because the surface is the only heat sink for the planet, and thus cooled faster? As far as I can recall, earth used to be really hot (a notion which has been repeated in some other posts), and it cooled. The core, being insulated, cooled slowly, while the surface hardened and became nice and temperate.

I don't think that radioactivity has any part to play in the matter. Besides, wouldn't that amount of radioactivity (enough to melt iron) be life-threatening? And I've never heard anything about the radioactive hazards of lava spills. I don't think that your theory holds up.

IO

[Not Your Average PHB]

poison gas plumes, erupting molten rock and yellow fields of snow.

Yup, sounds like Iowa to me. Ever been to Cedar Rapids?

Volcano's sustain life

[web-res]

Could the sulphur and lava flows possibly provide the energy to sustain life on the planet?

The more we find out about IO the more I'm sure that some primitive life exists there.

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Re:Volcano's sustain life

[roman_mir]

IAMANASTRONOMER except for being an IT professional.:)
The only and the single reason for the Earth inferno is radioactivity of materials hidden inside the planet.
Look at Mercury, Moon and Mars. There are no geological activities on those planets. The geological processes are manifestations of the movements of molten rock, requiring a big heat engine which in turn requires a relatively large planet that can release enough heat from radioactive rocks over long periods of time to make these processes work. Even Mars, larger than Mercury or the moon, does not have as much geological activity as the Earth or Venus because the heat released by radioactivity is conducted more quickly to the surface from which it rapidly escapes into space. However the closeness of Mercury to the sun raises the planets temperature well above 300C on the day side, the night side temperature falls as low as -150C.

Temperature of Venus goes above 450C due to a run away green house effect (too much CO2 in the atmosphere, no O2 or O3 (Ozone) at all to protect from ultraviolet radiation and that planet being almost the same size as Earth, has gathered enough radioactive elements during formation to have serious volcanic activity going on only about 500mln years ago.

It has being proven that should the inferno of our planet came out of just the physical motion of small protoplanets hitting each other during formation, our planet would have lost all that energy through dissipation only after after a few hundreds of millions of years after formation. Plus this is not my theory it is a fact, you can read all about it from astronomy or geology books. I recommend "The Search for Life in the Universe" 2nd ed. by Donald Goldsmith and Tobias Owen. There you'll come across most of what I have said here.

Re:Volcano's sustain life

[deglr6328]

don't be so sure yet. the volcanic vents at the ocean bottom on earth are entirely different than the volcanoes on io. Io throws out more than 100 times as much lava as all of earth's volcanoes put together. it lies smack in the center of an extremely intense(definitly deadly for life like us at least) radiation belt around jupiter. and the lava coming out of io's volcanoes is EXTREMELY hot, much more so than lava on earth which is around 1000 to 1200 degrees c. on io they can be as high as 2000 degrees!! seems like a totally inhospitable hell planet to me.

Re:Volcano's sustain life

[roman_mir]

I am not sure if you guys understand what is the source of IO's energy. Earth is hot in the core due to the radioactive elements found in this planet. It is true that all the internal heat of this planet is created by radioactive materials.

IO is so hot because it is spinning around huge Jupiter that creates enormous tides on its satellite. The heat is produced by electromagnetic friction and tidal waves in the mantel.

On Earth there was no life at the times when most of its surface was covered with over active volcanos. On IO, the electromagnetic forces of Jupiter are so strong that it would be extremely difficult for any life supporting molecules to build up simply because the chemical reactions would not take place or would be destroyed by strong electromagnetic forces.

Of-course we could speculate that the life forms of IO could in principle find it beneficial to use electromagnetic forces of invisible spectrum just like the Earth plants and some bacteria uses visible light to produce chlorophyll. There are no such life forms on Earth but they are not exactly impossible (they could exist somewhere) however, it is easy to predict that such life forms can exist in the right conditions, how would these life forms be created in the first place? IO is highly unstable and does not support predictable conditions for prolong periods of time. I do not believe we'll find any life on IO, we did not find anything on Mars and we know there was water there long time ago. Sad, but Earth will probably stay the only planet in this Solar System that originated life by itself. (We also must check out Callisto, but that is another matter.)

Re:Volcano's sustain life

[roman_mir]

I don't have to think about that, the pressure would not cause the melted mantel, pressure of such magnitudes as to cause lava only happen in protostars, we are just not massive enough. Jupiter and Saturn have much more pressure than Earth but this did not cause volcanos, it has being found that high pressure on Jupiter and Saturn caused the hydrogen atoms to change into a different chemical all together - metallic Hydrogen. You can simply calculate the amount of pressure needed to sustain molted mantel and it would be few million times more than what we have right now.

In fact, the forming stars use the heat generated by pressure to start their thermonuclear reactions. For example our sun needed a temperature of about 7million K in order to start fusing H into 2H deuteron, then into 3He than into 4He, the sun is about million km in diameter and Earth is about 6000km, earth has average density of 5.5 gm / cm^3 this is not even nearly enough to cause increase of heat by 3000K

Anyway, here is a link for you guys: http://ntserv.fys.ku.dk/mars.htm/WhyMars/chapter_6 .htm

Io X-games

[Gorimek]

Sounds like the ultimate extreme sport resort!

Pack up the snowboard & BMX, NASA!

Sounds familliar.

[Soko]

Geysers, mountains, lakes, volcanoes, atmosphere being poisoned... sounds a lot like Yellowstone (sulphur pun intended), doesn't it?

Re:The Clarke Connection

[Grant Elliott]

OK. That was probably his most far-fetched prediction. Absolutely incredible. I wonder how I never heard about this. Thanks.

Re:You don't have to live IN the lava

[randombit]

i suppose ther is still a miniscule possibility of life but shouldn't the temperature gradient, where it would have to reside, between the roasting lava feilds and the rest of the cryogenic surface be constantly moving though? as the lava cools it approaches the frozen temperature of the rest of the planet and when a volcano erupts the frozen surface is immediately plunged into a blast furnace of heat.

IIRC much of the surface of Io is covered in ice, and people are theorizing/hoping that there is a vast sea underneath, heated by the lava. And the radiation might help life evolve: throw lots of sulfur and other minerals into water, add radiation, and heat for several billion years. Sounds like a good recipe for life to me.

And hey, Sir Clarke has written about it happening, which as far as I'm concerned, increases the chances by at least 25% right there. :)

Re:Erupting Mountains Of?

[Spasemunki]

I hae a sneaking suspicion that they were both named after the trickster god of Norse mythology.

Re:The C;larke Connection

[randombit]

So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

No, the center of Jupiter really is a giant diamond. Oh, yeah, and enourmous beasts made of gas exist in Jupiter's upper atomosphere.

Oh, man, if we found out all that stuff Clarke has written about Jupiter were true, I would freak. :) Of course, he's been right so far... [insert alien/Clarke conspiracy theory here]

Re:The Clarke Connection

[Graymalkin]

How the hell is that far fetched? Jupiter has an enormous magnetic field. High energy particles become trapped in said field. Io's orbit is well within the lower (stronger) parts of Jupiter's magnetic field. Clark used physics and some creative thought to make his Jupiter predictions. How the fuck is that incredible?

Re:ever will be a long time then

[Graymalkin]

A solar sail is a dumb idea for anything past Saturn. If you really want to make it out of the solar system you'd need something like an Orion system with matter-antimatter reaction over a matter fusion reaction. And even then it would take a while. Crygenically freeze the people. Then send them out of the solar system like pollen.

More Information

[Phrogman]

There is more information related to this article here on spaceref.com

The C;larke Connection

[Grant Elliott]

As usual, Clarke predicts, NASA confirms. That European Space Agency division needs to start re-reading all of his books. Let's see here

Water/ice on Europa - Check

Volcanos on Io - Check

Ice in the moon - Check

Europa most likely location of life - Check

Sulfur vents on Io - Check

So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

Re:The C;larke Connection

[Grant Elliott]

I almost forgot about the diamond thing. Wouldn't that be awesome? Oh, and then we could use the Carbon from the diamond to make a bunch of buckyballs and build a bunch of space elevators...

Re:IO?

[Jonathan]

Io is a moon of Jupiter. Io was also the name of one of Zeus/Jupiter's girlfriends in mythology, so the name makes sense, sort of. It was also the setting of an early 80's mediocre SF movie with Sean Connery. Outland, I think the name was.

Ah, now it makes sense.

[Denor]

I'd always wondered why it was that the people at the computer store told me not to open my computer myself.... I mean, if my IO port is this hazardous, what's my Voodo 3 going to be like?

Re:IO?

[drix]

It's one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Europa, Ganymede & Callisto. It's very, very far away :)

--

It's like MP3s on your HD.

[yerricde]

Think about it. When you're running out of space for files on one drive, you get another drive. When you're running out of space for fellas on one planet or moon, you get another planet or moon. Never mind that aliens who look like these guys are armed, dangerous, and ready to strike at any terran invaders, kind of like Indep... erm, I'm boycotting the movies.

Re:How can you be sure?

[chriscrick]

One common way to identify chemical compositions of extraterrestrial bodies is to use spectrophotometry. Each chemical substance absorbs and reflects certain wavelengths of light, and so we can measure the color spectra of the light reflecting off a planet to figure out what it's made of.

Chris

Re:ever will be a long time then

[rogerbo]

Actually the theory of relativity has the solution to long term interstellar travel. The theory goes that time slows down as the speed you are traveling at increases. As you approach the speed of light time almost comes to a standstill. This means that a flight to alpha century at just under light speed would take a little over 4 years for the people on earth but mere days for the crew of the ship.

Yep, but the problem is how you get any significant amount of mass to within a fraction of lightspeed. In fact getting any significant amount of mass to even a 10th of lightspeed requires so much energy that we have no clue how to do it yet.

Re:Volcanoes

[faqBastard]

Good comments by Barbarian:

We're really studying it just b/c it's _there_ to study, and enough people inside of NASA think that Io is just fuckin cool, so let's investigate! :)

I saw a good Feynman quote recently:

"Science is like sex. Once in a while something useful pops out, but that's not really why we're doing it."

:)

Of course, there are tons of practical benefits too. Do you consider the greenhouse effect to be an important enough problem to study here on Earth? I can tell you now, any theory about the greenhouse effect on Earth, will have to be consistent with the (massive) greenhouse effect on Venus, and the (not-so-massive) greenhouse effect on Mars ...

Just an example, there are also parallels for Io ...

Re:IO?

[technos]

Io is one of the moons of Jupiter, which is one of the other planets in our solar system, Sol. Jupiter is a whopper of a planet, with a lot of moons, but it's made out of gas so landing there is a moot point. If you're in North America, Jupiter is that reddish dot just above the horizon in the east-southeast sky about 11pm EST.

ever will be a long time then

[chompz]

Finding life on another planet if it is not in our solar system will be a long time off. Although telescopes can (hubble etc) can maybe see a planet rotating around a sun a long distance away, they cannot get the details needed to identify if there is life there, so if we discover life in another solarsystem, that probally means that we traveled there. Of course, someone else could discover us and somehow let us know, but if you think about it, they would then have been looking for us as long as we would be looking to find them, which would probally be millions of years.

Traveling to another planet is no trivial task, put that planet light years away, and it is a nearly impossible task. Try to keep a small colony of people alive for 10,000 years while traveling in deep space with nothing to entertain themselves but eachother and an old copy of Quake3.

s/quake3/yourfavgame/

People have a hard enough time surviving in a close quartered situation for a few months, try it for your whole life!

Don't even tell me about the solar sail plan, that's publicity, not a realistic solution for long distance travel. Although it is probally better in the long run than thinking solid fuel (or liquid fuel) would work to go more than to mars or so.

If we meet another intelligent life form, it'll probally be by accident, not due to anything else.