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

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

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?

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.)

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: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?