Slashdot Mirror
Another Look at Life On The Jovian moons
dlkf writes "CNN is talking about the possibility of life on several of Jupiter's moons. The researchers theorize that it is possible for Callisto, Ganymede and Europa to be able to build up enough oxygen in their subsurface salt water oceans to support life."
>>God exists. - Knowing that we can assume that..
please prove conclusively. Tossing around a book of fairy tails (that by the way declares that the earth is flat, the sun goes around the earth, that dinosaurs are impossible, and that women are subservent to men, among other nonsense) isn't going to get you far. Neither will declaring that you saw the virgin mary in your burrito at Taco Bell.
It's fun to play make believe....
". . . So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome, and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?"
-Joseph Heller (Catch 22)
Hydric acid also works and Dihydrogen Monoxide may be another possibility.
NASA spends millions researching astrology really? So thats why all the horoscopes in the nations papers are so accurate! And you are calling it a waste of money?!
would be to launch the Jupiter mission *from* Mars, once we have a base built up there. it's closer, and has less gravity. Hell, we could even launch from Phobos or Deimos.
No, it's not presumptuous. Sunlight is one of the easiest sources of energy to exploit and pretty much guarenteed to be available on any planet that isn't frozen solid. Sure, there are other possible sources of enegry (thermo and chemosynthesis come to mind), but expecting life on some planet to have evolved these while passing up on photosynthesis entirely is like expecting the roulette wheel to come up 27 27 times in a row. Sure, it could happen, and given a large enough universe, probably has, but for every planet with life but no photosynthesis there are probably a million with it. (Note: 90% of statistics are made up. :)
Who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere?
Err, that's actually one of the three basic axioms of science (the second as I learned them):
[1] Nature is lawful -- things happen in accord with the laws of nature. Since science is in the business of discovering the laws of nature, we presuppose this -- it would be pointless to try to discover the laws of nature if they don't exist.
[2] The laws of nature are universal -- they apply any place, any time. If this were not true, the scientific method would be useless, since experienments would not tell you anything except what was true in that lab at that time -- they would tell you nothing about what to expect tomorrow or in Miami.
[3] The laws of nature are understandable by us. This has to be true or the whole scientific enterprise is pointless and doomed to failure.
Those are the axioms of science. If any one of them is not true, science is an utter pointless waste of time. If you don't believe it's an utterly pointless waste of time, you probably have faith in these principles.
So, who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere? Science does. To say otherwise is to be literally unscientific...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Err, we don't. We just get excited when we discover oxygen because we know of lifeforms that use oxidants, whereas anything else doesn't really mean anything to us...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Huh? Who is "they"? I know of no scientist who has ever claimed that life on some other world has been proven, much less used the existence of oxygen and/or water as the basis for this "proof".
Isn't it possible for life to exist without one or the other? (I mean, just because we need it is not proof.)
Sure, but they would need some sort of alternative biochemistry. This is possible, but when we discover worlds where our own biochemistry is possible, we find this a lot more exciting...
Anaerobic organisms exist on Earth, why not elsewhere?
Anaerobic organism on Earth still require oxygen, they just don't require molecular oxygen (O2). Getting by with no oxygen at all (meaning not only no O2 but no other molecules requiring the element oxygen in their composition) may or may not be possible, but would certainly be quite a bit more difficult. Kind of like trying to get by without carbon -- in theory it could be done, hence speculation into silicon based life, but in fact carbon and oxygen are some of the most versatile elements (chemically speaking) in existence -- getting by without them would be pretty damn hard...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Well, considering that NASA always needs funding, any statement of the form "When NASA needs funding for some project these days, X occurs." is going to be true. For example, "Has anyone noticed that when NASA needs funding for some project these days that hurricanes start forming in the Atlantic?" This observation, although certainly true, does not prove that Atlantic hurricanes are caused by NASA scientists seeking funding. Correlation does not indicate causality.
These are identifyed by their particular structure and composition based on our knowledge of the indegionus rocks known to exist on these moons and planets, even though no one has ever been there or seen one, and no samples have ever been brought back by any means.
First of all, it's flat out false that we've never seen rocks on other planets. In fact, I think at this point there are no rocky planets that we haven't at least seen the rocks of. True, we haven't brought any samples back except from the Moon, but you don't need to bring a sample back to determine chemical composition. Learn to use a spectroscope...
I might find a Jupiter moon rock in my back yard. It will have been tossed here by some astoriod collision. How will I identify the markings?
Look for a small tag on the bottom labeled "Made on Jupiter". It's painfully obvious at this point you know so little about astrophysics that you couldn't possibly have a reasonable opinion on the subject -- for your information, no, it is not possible for you to find a rock from Jupiter in your backyard, tosssed here by some asteroid collision -- any asteroid that somehow managed to make it through Jupiter's impressive atmosphere without being incinerated completely would splash into an ocean of liquid hydrogen deep enough to sink most planets in -- no Jovian rocks would be tossed anywhere during this splashdown.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Anaerobic life is more primitive, and therefore more likely to be found there.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Are there any microbes that could be injected into Venus' clouds that would transform Venus' greenhouse gases into benign gases (or fix them out of the atmosphere into solid or liquid compounds that would rain down on the surface)?
What are Venus' greenhouse gases anyway?
Sorely ignorant of Venusian atmospheric chemistry,
GPS
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
That's just life vaguely as we know it. They talk about chlorophyll and alternate metabolisms that we know here, but there could be other ways. Complexity theory suggests that any system with the right rate of change and stimulus (energy) could generate life.
Mars doesn't have it. Mars is too frozen. Gas giants probably don't have it, being too chaotic. Anything liquid is a good place to start. Saturn's moon may be too energy poor, despite it's oceans and geysers. I bet Jupiter's moons are just right.
Of course, that's just my information and speculation, I could be wrong.
Start Running Better Polls
The implication in these articles is that if the spot concerned ``could support'' life, then life would spontaneously form there, as if it were no more complex than snowflakes. That's like claiming that where international airports exist, aircraft are sure to form, only more so - your average jetliner is much, much simpler than a ``simple'' one-celled lifeform.
Think about it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'd say that with these discoveries, the chance of us finding life (even primordial life) is getting higher. I remember seeing an experiment where they dumped a bunch of elementary gasses and compounds into a tube, heated it up, electrified it on occasion and ended up with a number of important amino acids. Not life, but at least a hint that DNA (or some other way of reproduction) might be a state that matter can fall into fairly easily, given good initial conditions.
æeee!
maybe your god created life on other planets after the bible had been written.
cpeterso
Not so.
The radiation environment on Europa is terrible. It's no place for routine operations. It will probably never be directly explored by humans.
Furthermore, navagating safely through the asteroid belt is really no problem. It's been done by 7-8 spacecraft(NEAR dipped into it when flying by Mathilde) to date without hazard. From SF movies we have this image of an asteroid belt as being a dense stream of little rocks requiring frequent twists and turns to avoid, but in fact they are millions of klicks apart, and the chances of hitting one that's too small to be discovered is effectively zero.
Helium balloons want to be free.
You're correct when you say that the Bible does not state that there are life on other planets. However, the Bible also says nothing about televisions or microwave ovens, but we have those today, don't we? I think the point is that just because the Bible doesn't explicitly say that there are extraterrestrial civilizations doesn't mean that they don't exist, only that the Bible is silent on that point.
.. whether it is Earth-based or not .. is cursed by sin. Because of this, all life is in need of salvation from that sin. We know from historical record (the Bible) that the Lord Jesus Christ spent 33 years cleansing this planet of sin. Because the Bible is inerrant, we must assume that 33 years is the exact amount of time required to purge the sin of a planet. (After all, if it were more or less, that would imply an imperfect Christ .. something that is not allowed by Scripture.)
Friends, I think the facts point to the existence of at least 59 extraterrestrial civilizations. I submit that all life
We also know that Jesus pledged to return one day. So far, He hasn't. This means that he is most likely purging other civilizations of sin. Christ died 1,970 years ago; assuming that He is not bound by the speed of light, that gives Him enough time to purge 59 planets of sin. (If he is limited by lightspeed, things get complicated, but there is no reason to assume that such an arbitrary natural law applies to God.)
The point is that with each passing year that Jesus does not return, the odds for extraterrestrial life go up. This is a good thing. I for one am excited about the prospect of life among the stars, and I am convinced that it exists. Don't let an overly-narrow interpretation of Scripture dictate a purely ethnocentric worldview to you; it will only hold you back.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Of course there's life on Europa! Don't you remember that documentary, uhhh, whatzit called...the one that ended with that message...oh yeah.
:P.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT FOR EUROPA.
MAKE NO LANDINGS THERE.
Yeah. Incontrivertible proof. So there
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Don't forget that a lot of NASA's work is to do with aeronautics, not space. Things like new materials for construction of aircraft, quieter & more powerful engines, accident prevention & other useful stuff. Even if you eliminated all of NASA's space commitments, some of that 14 billion would remain.
Wouldn't people be crushed to death if we sent them to Jupiter because of the gravity? Not to mention it's basically just gas so there wouldnt' be much to land on.
The discovery of life on Europa would more or less confirm the ubiquity of life. If microbes were found on Mars, they could have originated on Earth and moved to Mars (or vice versa), but the chances are low indeed (although admittedly not zero) of Earth and Europan life having a common origin.
Having said that...
The Vostok life forms show only that life can exist in such environments; it says nothing about life forming there. It may well be possible for existing life to adapt to a shitty environment (from our POV), but it would, to my untrained eye, be far more difficult for life to start there.
Instead of waisting so much money on obsolete missions to places, we won't be able to travel to, I say these scientist should focus on a way to breathe new life into Silicon Valley
Want Root?
Where the hell is "Jupitor"???? I know that Jupiter is the fifth planet out from the Sun, but what star does Jupitor orbit? Since it's not in our solar system, it would probably take millenia, not just years.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The linked-to article discusses alternatives to photosynthesis as an energy source for life in these moons.
Not one of the alternatives mentions undersea volcanoes. There are many species here on earth (both unicellular and multicellular) that rely on volcanoes on the ocean floor ('black smokers') as an energy source. This seems a lot more likely than some strange radioactive phosphorous (or was it potassium) isotope.
It has been proven that other bodies in the solar system are volcanically active like the earth, so how did they miss this possibility?
NASA has a $14billion/yr budget to pay for all its programs right now. Not just space launches, everything. Remember - It's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA gets publicity (which it needs to generate funding) through big space launches, but a large portion of their funding goes to running such things as research into weather and new aircraft techlogies to make flying easier and safer. The one thing that we must have gets very little. Whether we like it or not, we need to get off this planet. We know for certain that Earth has been hit by asteroids before, and that it will be again. Right now, all of our eggs (figuratively and literally) are in one basket. Because of the shortsighted thinking of "Solve our problems NOW!", we are dooming ourselves. As for it not being fair, nothing is. But, to paraphrase J. Michael Straczynski, imagine how much worse life would be if it were fair, and every bad thing that happened to you happened because you deserved it. And with regard to "preventing another Columbine", the answer is simple - stop treating children as adults. They aren't. They need their parents to be parents. If parents would take their job seriously, not plunk their child in front of a TV. There is no substitute for a parent being involved with their children. Take responsibility, for fuck's sake! The schools are there to impart facts, wisdom and morals must come from the parents. In summary, NASA is doing far more than it is percieved as doing, and every project has payback. Problems don't disappear when money gets thrown at them, all that does is create new problems. For the rest - life isn't fair. Get over it.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Why spend all of this money to if life might exist on Jovian moons?
General advancement of chemical science. So far our only frame of reference for life is energy from the Sun + water + minerals. It is possible that something exists there that doesn't follow this chemical chain. Who knows what radically different chemistry can do?
Advancement in communications. Tracking and communicating with something that takes more than an hour to talk to isn't easy. Also sending a message back isn't exactly trivial either. Improvements in this can help improve your cell phone coverage.
Advancement in hardened semiconductors, stuff necessary to survive the huge and intense electromagnetic field that surrounds Jupiter can make stable computer parts. Not to mention power is a premium on a robot like that. Building hardened low power electronics can have applications for things where we can't afford failure(think air planes).
Its dark out there. You can't just strap a Handicam on the side of it and expect to get a decent picture. Improved techniques for taking pictures in low light might help make better digitial cameras for us here.
How about just for the sake of **doing it**? Yes we have problems here. Throwing more money at them might fix things. But you know what? Money doesn't fix everything either.
There is definately life in Europe. I should know, I live there.
/L
Oh, Europa.... Never mind.
I think at times like this, we should all heed the sage advice of Jack Handey:
And if there isn't any life on Jupiter's moons, we can go out and start a party of our own... Recently, bacterial ecosystems have been discovered in Earth's clouds. This opens the possibility of using balloons on Venus to inject heat and acid loving bacteria into Venus' cloud droplets at 40-50 Km. Let's start colonizing space today!
No one said anything about sending anyone to Jupiter.
I know Slashdot readers have an aversion to reading the linked stories, but refusing to even pay attention to the summary before posting is just pathetic.
-Legion
This also has practical implications for getting further away from earth. If probes got to start at mars for the trip to jupiter they would take significantly less time. As I see it we will move out from earth in bite sized hops rather than it great bounds.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
NASA scientists believe there might possibly be life on any large rock in the universe that might possibly have water and/or an oxygen supply that NASA has cannot confirm.
Sources say that in the near future, during another slow media week for NASA, they will reveal the name of one of these rocks that couple possibly have water water that might support life.
-gerbik
"It also might be possible to terraform these moons to be much more earth-like."
Yes.. all we need to do is initiate the Genesis project on one of the moons and we will have a great place for refueling and a new Spock!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,27849,00.html
Lets all have a moment of silence for a great actor.
Thank you.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
But in the real world, education is being cut, law enforcement is under staffed, and we are spending billions on rockets that do nothing. Private business can and will pick up the slack where needed.
It's too bad the reality is unpopular here, and will be silenced by people who don't agree. I'd mod your post up if I could.
________
"The researchers theorize that it is possible for Callisto, Ganymede and Europa to be able to build up enough oxygen in their subsurface salt water oceans to support life." Whoever said that oxygen was neccessary to support life?
zork% mv *.asp
283 files eaten by a grue
yeah, Al Gore could invent life on other worlds
When somebody says that we should go to Tau Ceti, do you think they mean that we should fly up and try to land on the star? Same thing here. What's meant is that we should send people to Jupiter's moons.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Sending people is great for propaganda (c.f. the entire Moon race business) but not the best way to get information.
Sending stacks of expendable, cheap probes gives you loads more information per unit currency, and multiple redundancy for when things go wrong.
The planned manned mission to Mars is a bit bonkers. Several months travel time each way, in the most inhospitable medium imaginable, i.e. space. Cooped up in a tiny spacecraft? No space chicks?
Place your bets:
1. Crew returns back from Mars, having found sod all, to resoundingly unenthusiastic 'woo' sounds from the world at large.
2. Technical failure kills everyone (en-route or marooned on Mars)
3. Crew member flips, disaster follows.
NASA had some funky ideas for self-replicating machines back in the 70s, which would build mines/refineries/factories on the Moon, producing more machines to build more mines/factories etc., and having enough left over to send back to Earth/build bases for humans to take over afterwards. An application of artificial life, but you have to worry slightly that it doesn't go all Darwinian on you (a mistake in replication leading to removal of the 'override off switch' facility makes a 'fitter' organism in the sense that it has one less way to be killed off).
</random_ramblings>
I'd think that we'd have a trip to Mars before a trip to jupitor anyways. The moons close. I've heard that a Mars mission would be 8 months at a minimum. Jupitor would take YEARS. We're going to want to do some serious stress testing first...
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
It has to do with the alignment of the planets. We want to launch so we have the shortest intercept with mars. Mars and Earth have different orbital speeds, so they vary from 'right next to each other' to 'on opposite sides of the sun'. I've heard that probes could take from between 6-18 months to reach Mars, depending on the positions.
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
Sorry, Yeesh. So I misspelled Jupiter. I've been up WAY too long. At least I only have an hour left.
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
$200-300 sounds fishy to me
- 00 3-HQ.html
Lets' see. According to
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS
Nasa's 2001 budget is 14 billion. A quick trip to the census says that there were about 275 million citizens in 2000. I figure that's close enough.
By golly, we can save $51 per person if we eliminate NASA. But guess what? No more weather satellites. Television, communication sats will also no longer be launched.
NASA has actually been the only government organization to provide a measurably positive effect on the economy. This might not be as true anymore, but the research done by NASA has had far-reaching effects.
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
Why cant we just let Europa be ?
Let the monolith do its work..and one day the children of the new world would meet the children of the old
I am a 2001 : Space Odyssey junkie..
Rapid Nirvana
Your biochemistry is perfectly correct. However, your conclusion is wrong this time, but for a subtle reason: Chyba's point (I have the paper in question in front of me right now) is that O2 in Europa's ocean would provide a source of energy. Molecular oxygen is seldom in equilibrium with any environment and tends to "want" to react quickly (which is a lot of what made it so dangerous for life). If you can provide a source of molecular oxygen to the oceans, the recombination reactions would represent a way that life could support itself. It is similar to how bacteria around geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean can use sulfar compunds that are spurted out of the vents in disequilibrium concentrations to live.
...a scientist with SETI (Search for Intelligent Life Institute), told CNN...
That would be SILI, not SETI. Silly, CNN.
Astronomers might have to wait awhile for more clues in the search for life. The earliest another mission could launch for the Jupiter system is 2008.
Anyone know why? Just budget?
sulli
RTFJ.
I thought I saw on Discovery that massive gravitational forces can also generate warmth, because movement/strain in the moon's surface.
That could mean higher temperature than expected.
But IANA*
...a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore ~H2G2
All your moonbase are belong to US!
OK, unavoidable stupidity out of the way. Here's why we won't be using these as stopovers for a while yet - the radiation problem. See, the core of Jupiter is fluid metallic hydrogen, and it's spinning - this is responsible for Jupiter's enormous magnetic field strength - go here for numbers.
All of the moons listed are inner moons, so their surfaces are constanly under bombardment from energetic particles trapped by Jupiter's magnetic field. An astronaut on the surface of any one of them would recieve a lethal dose in no time flat.
Now, once we have adequate shielding (saw an interesting scheme to use material from one othe outer moons for this), we could land on or orbit a manned probe and send rovers out on the surface, and subs on Europa.
---------------
---------------
Vpered na Mars!
Maybe we should first try to improve our track record with lifeforms on earth.
I sure hope the first person to discover lifeforms outside of earth will not be Japanese or Chinese. Why ? What do you think will be the first thing they try ? Of course - to eat the creature.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
...after all, we already know there's life on Mar's moons, Phobos and Deimos.
---
Europa, plenty of people living there.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
If one of Jupiter's moons harbors complex life it would be a great boon to both science and the biotechnology industries. Scientifically, we would be able to compare the new life forms to life on Earth, both chemically and morphologically and maybe develop and refine new theories about the evolution of life. Also, as with life on Earth, many of these organisms would have developed novel bio-chemical interactions that could be duplicated and exploited for their unique properties by manufacturing and medical industries. Whoever it was that posted above that our efforts and focus on Mars is wasted is partly right. Mars in of itself is not a very interesting destination, but as a way station to get to Europa or other potential life bearing moons of Jupiter, it would serve a valuable purpose. Mars is only interesting from a geological standpoint at best.
Maskirovka
--
Copy protection (noun). A class of methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
- New Hackers Dictionary
Superplastic manufacturing methods, particularly with aluminum.
Aluminum cans (related to the above).
World wide communications networks.
Accurate weather prediction.
Protection for all the worlds power grids.
Ceramics
Photovoltaics
I could quite literally go on for hours I'm sure. In fact one might make the case that the only government programs that were more beneficial were those of the DoD that produced computers, nuclear power, or DoE programs that brought water and power to every corner of the US. The fact of the matter is programs like NASA are what the government does right. If for some reason, these labors seem superfluous try doing with out them. Big government is what made the US what it is. If you think it was the bible, trucks with curtains and gun racks that made the US great, well I salute your ignorance. The effort it must have taken to get through life learning so little of your history is truly an achivement worth recognizing if not repeating.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
You would call this foolhardy, perhaps liken it to gambling? Well, I would make the clam that "big science" endevors such as these are more like numerology. If one considers Bible codes where "researchers" claim to find all manner of hidden messages that seem to "predict" the future, you find when you look. "Bible codes" and other similar "patterns" are obviously crap. Nothing more than interesting coincidence. Now, when you start looking for coincidences like that, you'll never know what they might relate to until you look. But its trivial to show that you WILL find something. When you look at undertaking challenging projects, such as NASA does, you know you will find something of intrest. When you look, you find. People such as yourself look at a dark room and conclude by its darkness it must be empty. A little illumination is always in order. As much as I would personaly like to get a hate on for people like you, and as much as I thoroughly despise the exhaltation of ignorance, I just can't bring myself to do it. It that damn situational myopia. Its not your fault you can't see anything beyond that which is immediately in front of you. Once more how can I truly admonish one for possessing, what I consider to be, an all too common trait. But still. The selection of ignorance over enlightenment? The painful irony is the information is free, at your library, on the internet, and bookstores with cafes. But you don't want to know. You acctually don't want to know. You want to cloak yourself in not knowing, and preach that knowing is bad. I've got to say, I find that far more offensive than anything that happens in Tijuana between two consenting mammals.
Look I'll admit big government makes big mistakes, but I still say it also makes bigger advances. Small governement serves small intrests, typically those with deep pockets. With some of the choices the Republicans and some of the Democrats seem to be headed towards, I would expect my Euro-Pacific fund to really take off ten years from now. Things like the national super collider in Texas might have cemented us as the leaders in high temperature superconductors, and a few other areas of materials engineering. Maybe that would have lead to early breakthroughs in fusion research. Probably not, but still what a risk to pass up.
What about risk anyway. You seem to think risk is something to be avoided. Not so. It's something to be controlled. Boeing, for all its trouble of late, might not even be around if not for some of the risks they took. They basically bet the farm on the 747, arguably one of the greatest aviation successes ever. The 777 was a risk in its own right as well. And now raytheon is building on that, planning to offer a jet with an all composit airframe. I suppose my final observation will be that the greatest risk of all might be never taking any risks.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
If you want a God worship me. At least I exist.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
If there is life that's not all to good. If we go to check on it and we DIE that would be bad.
But if we could kickstart life there [that would probaly kill us anyways] that could be cool.
But the cool thing would be - if we could live/stay there. Jupiter is pretty far away, and if we colonized it then it would be awsome cause our new snotty Jovian friends would be far away so we wouldn't have to look at them.
But really it looks to be a promising rest stop on the way to farther things. Not to mention if the earth blew up or something, the 'survivors' would be tucked away safetly.
What kinda impact would that have on our world if people could leave and then there is people who hate you because of what planet you lived on?
Get your Unix fortune now!
If there is, in actuality life on the moon's Callisto, Ganymede and Europa, then wouldent that lead us to further study of grass roots organisms, and the true history of our own planet, and how through evolution the earth has been changed. This could be a very good thing, for curious minds.
Acidic-Intelligence --War is peace-- -Freedom is slavery-- ignorance is strength
I can safely say that if whatever lives up there ever comes down here, I've got 4 cases of Head & Shoulders here at home.
Dancin Santa
As we have not yet actually heard from our brethren residing on other planets, how do you know that they are not out there? If God scattered us around the universe, wouldn't it stand to reason that we may have just not yet made contact?
Dancin Santa
Hypotheses such as this provide even more reason for us as Humans to spread forth an information-gathering web composed of probes and satellites everywhere. The more data we collect, the better picture of what is really out there we'll have.
Humankind needs new places to live, new environments for it to populate. Possibly the moons of Jupiter can provide the means of life for humans, if so we need to know.
There are many other possible sources of energy that have been utilized (and are currently being utilized) by life on earth other than the conventional carbon/oxygen cycle. Primo example are the life forms around the "black smokers". Blue/green algae are also found in anoxic forms. For those with a really long memory, there was an editorial done in Analog magazine many years ago by John Cambell about the difference between "The" enviroment and "An" enviroment. Seems that there was an enviroment that existed on a planet once upon a time that we know about that was wiped out by a life form that emitted very poisonous gasses. The planet was earth, the time was several billion years ago, the life forms distroyed were blue green algae and the poisonous gas was oxygen emitted by green algae.
I dare say that we also may have to re-consider what we mean by life when we actually get to examine some of these places. Prions are self replecating, but not life by our usual definition. Viral particles are. What happens when you find something that is self-replicating and more complex than the bare prion protein, but without the rna of a virus?
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.
Of course there's life out there around other stars and most likely in our own solar system. I don't understand why we always assume that the life must be oxygen-based. There must be other systems out there deriving energy that don't rely on an oxygen cycle.
I believe life must exist even in places that have traditionally been considered too "inhospitable".
There really isn't the claim that these moons actually currently have lifeforms on them, just that it's possible for the moons to support life in the future. Subtle difference, sure, but if we earthlings need to have a base for refueling and building spacecraft for missions to further areas in the universe this is the place. It's on the outside of the asteriod belt, so new missions wouldn't have to carefully plan for navigating that region. It also might be possible to terraform these moons to be much more earth-like.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
Green sulfur bacteria are obligate anaerobic photoautotrophs. They were probably among the first forms of life in the universe. Who knows whether they go from planet-to-planet via meteoric debris, or if they occur naturally with the formation of young planets. I tend to assume the latter case.
Has anyone noticed that when NASA needs funding for some project these days that rocks are found that somehow found their way to the earth. These are identifyed by their particular structure and composition based on our knowledge of the indegionus rocks known to exist on these moons and planets, even though no one has ever been there or seen one, and no samples have ever been brought back by any means. I might find a Jupiter moon rock in my back yard. It will have been tossed here by some astoriod collision. How will I identify the markings?
R.I.P.
Let me guess, you read at +1? well than, pay attention now, see that 'Re:' in the subject line? that means that the post is a "Reply". Do you understand now?
I am not a spork.
s/than/then; //slap
I am not a spork.
O.K. Well send you next week, I hope you are ready to spend years in transit. use that time to get rested up because when you land on europa we need you to drill through MILES of ice.
I, for one, am sick of stories related to how humans could, one day, occupy or travel to a planet or moon other than earth. Since the walk on the moon during the cold war, no nation or community of nations has taken a substantive step to occupy or physically visit another planet or moon.
/.. Generally, humankind does not prepare for such a monumential undertaking unless it is threatened or if a catastrophe has occurred. In other words, unless a meteor hits earth, I doubt humankind will be motivated to do nothing more than talk the talk. By then, obviously, it would be too late.
If this event has yet to occur, then I doubt to see it during my lifetime or the lifetime of any user at
Moreover, the initiative to travel or occupy another planet or moon would not be based on intelligent astronomical or planetary curiousities but, rather, it would be based on human's animal instincts to survive. If this was not true, then does mankind not currently possess such intelligent curiousities and the technology for a substantive developments?
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
This was first proposed after Voyager I and II flew past the planet and took high-resolution pictures of Europa's surface. Since then, it has been touted as a possibility from non-scientists like Issac Asimov all the way into movies (a.k.a. 2010 A Space Odyssey).
If there is any life to be found, it's probably some awful mold that any ordinary domestic scientist would promptly kill with Lysol.
-C
I'm no biology/space major, but isn't it a bit presumptous to expect extraterristerial life to rely on photosynthesis, even within our own galaxy? Who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere?
The current theory is that oxygen appeared on earth primarily as a by-product of photosynthesis and constituted a threat to most life on earth. Oxygen-utilizing organisms evolved in response, and this turned out to be the way animals could evolve. It's kind of ironic that only the production of a toxic waste product (oxygen) allowed evolution to go this way. If that hadn't happened, earth might stil be filled with little more than bacteria.
Main reason for Mars is that it is close. The distance between planets increases in an exponent-like (note, not an actual exponent) way as you move out. Venus is closer but the temperature and the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere makes keeping probes alive for long a problem. As for people, very few manned space missions couldn't have been better done by machines better (possibly only missions to determine the effects of space on humans need actual people). Most manned flights (particularly those to the moon) were manned for more PR-reasons (stick one up the Ruskies in return for getting manned orbit first) than the need for human crew. Unmanned probes have the added benefit of not needing to come back. They are subject to mechanical breakdown (especially when the US insists on building their parts in Inches (I thought you guys kicked the Brits out of there?), but humans are pretty fragile in harsh environments too. That isn't to say we shouldn't send human crews for other reasons (aesthetics, novelty, just because we can - are all as valid reasons as anyone has ever given for bothering to live), but probes are generally a better first step. BTW, download Celestia (*nix or win) and virtually explore the known and extropolated universe. You can't land on the planets, but you can get a pretty close orbit! Great stuff!
The man with no surname and a silly hat
On the universe: It's bunk.
Seems to me that if all there was on Europa was some little bacteria like the ones claimed for Mars, nobody would care much about this story. But they really should be saying "life as we know it," based on carbon, using (or generating) oxygen, and the rest of it, to play this up to the hilt.
Inventor of the LOLbalrog meme.
Well now that George Dubya is in office you can ask "Is there INTELLIGENT life in the Oval Office?"
[sorry couldn't resist]
---
------
Sig
Oh come on! Am I THAT bad? This was just too good a joke to pass by... gimme a break... Hey at least I'm not squashing watermellons like that Gallager guy!
---
------
Sig
because then I could say, "Shouldn't they spend more time trying to determine if there's any life in the Oval Office?"
Unfortunately, this is like most other announcements about the possibilties of life in our universe. It is a perfectly legit (at least I don't see a reason to doubt it) scientific study and the data will be corrupted by the media and E.T. fanatics until the information is useless to most of society. *cough*faceonmars*cough* Nonetheless, I'm glad to hear the announcement and I am fond of the idea of finding an ecology structured differently from ours. That would be a great discovery for biology.
Windows is more convenient than Linux just as having an ingrown toenail is more convenient than seeing a podiatrist.
Bling bling blibghsd dhsadfhdj Can I have some? Please?
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.