Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Evidence of Bacterial Life on Europa

Posted by timothy on from the or-it-could-be-the-flush-of-health dept.

AaronW writes: "According to this article at newscientist.com, the rosy color of Europa may be caused by bacteria. Apparently the previously unexplained infra-red signature matches that of extremophile bacteria found here on Earth."

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. All these worlds are yours... by Deagol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    except Europa.

    --
    Method of processing duck feet
  2. Fits Are Not Unique by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oddly, I was just having an argument with the head of CU's astrobiology institude about this point. Fits to surface spectra are seldom unique. It's a pain in the butt, be we can't even identify the minerals on Mars uniquely some of the time. Europa is worse. Not only do we not know the chemistry as well (rocks is rocks, and we have plenty of those on Earth), but the conditions are hard to reproduce. Temperatures of around 100 K, almost no surface pressure and a harsh radiation environment.

    If you do a little digging (check back issues of Science magazine), you'll notice that there are already two theories about the mysterious absorber on Europa. There's McCord's salts theory and there's the sulfuric acid theory (put forward by Carlson). We can't distinguish between them right now. Adding another potential absorber to the fray doesn't really fundementally alter that we just can't tell right now what's down there.