Evidence of Bacterial Life on Europa

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."

Comments

All these worlds are yours...

[Deagol]

except Europa.

Occam's Razor

[Catiline]

Glenn Teeter from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state says bacteria aren't the simplest explanation for Europa's spectrum.
Yet...
No one has managed to come up with the perfect mix of [mineral] salts to explain all of Europa's spectrum.

Okay boys, settle down and apply a little common sense here. If the experiment works, let's ask ourselves why. At the least, it proves Europa has all the right elements (pun intended, for sure) for life to form.

Of course we still would want to go and see for ourselves, just to be sure. But let's make sure the astronauts pack lots of penicillin, just in case. {grin}

Re:Occam's Razor

[re-geeked]

But which argument does the Razor favor?

Is it simpler to believe that a mix of salts causes both the IR spectrum and the visible coloration, or is it simpler to believe that some bacteria cause it?

We've never seen life off the Earth, but we've also never seen a lack of life in livable conditions on Earth.

We've never seen bacteria having an effect on another celestial body's spectrum, but we've never seen the combination of salts (even on Earth) that could cause this spectrum either.

I would grant that it doesn't meet Sagan's more stringent requirement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

I also agree there's only one way to be sure...

Re:Occam's Razor

[JabberWokky]

We've never seen bacteria having an effect on another celestial body's spectrum, but we've never seen the combination of salts (even on Earth) that could cause this spectrum either.

Have we even ever *seen* salts on anything other than Earth - I mean verifiable through other than spectral analysis. Quite simply, we really know *very* little about even our neighboring planets. Occam's razor becomes utterly useless when you're dealing with neigh-complete unknowns; there's no way to choose the most simple explaination when you have only one example that you know. Give me the total, verified chemical makeup of 5,000 planets near a star with a similar stellar sequence, and *then* start saying you can predict the most simple hypothesis.

Hell, we've sent probes to Mars, and don't know if there was life there. We don't even know for sure that there is water ice on our own moon of significant quantities.

(As an aside that will probably provoke more replies than the main text, does anyone else get fucking pissed at people who are unable to realize that humanity is *really* in it's infancy, and we've barely cracked the egg? Ad Astra Per Aspera, but the Eagle has landed, and we're on our way out.)

--
Evan

More wacky reporting from New Scientist

[HorsePunchKid]

See my previous rant. This seems to be yet another case where a writer for this news source has put their own sci-fi spin on what is otherwise a very unremarkable bit of information. Take five minutes to read and think about the points in this article, and you'll be sorry you did. It's chock full of conceptual holes, misunderstandings, and unfounded extrapolations into the news-bite realm of absurdity. Please stop posting this yellow journalism.

Re:More wacky reporting from New Scientist

[caffeinated_bunsen]

New York Times : National Enquirer :: Nature :

A. Annals of Physics
B. New England Journal of Medicine
C. New Scientist
D. None of the above

This story provides yet more evidence for C.

Fits Are Not Unique

[CheshireCatCO]

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.

Re:Life

[JabberWokky]

Considering the sheer amount of searching we have done in order to attempt the creation of life, we can assume that it requires extremely delicate (i.e. extremely improbable conditions). Were this not the case, we would have found the right combination to create life already.

We have failed to create sustainable fusion as well. Go out on a cloudless sky, and you will see as many arguments against your logic as there are stars in the... well, you get the idea. Just because *we* cannot do something doesn not mean it is not dirt common as far as the greater universe is concerned.

our past experience shows that it is easier for to generate salts that have unique properties than it is to create life

And yet we cannot create a mixure of salts to match this signature - the only thing that does exist that matches are bacteria. I would say that you are arguing for the opposition.

I should never consider that the probability of something that has never been observed should be considered astronomically low?

Something that has never been observed in a domain that has never had more than casual observation. If I tell you that there is a set of 10,000 numbers, and one is 89.63, what can you predict of the set? We know what color Europa is (in a few different spectra), and what it's surface looks like on a very low resolution - the kind of resolution that would miss life on Earth. That's it.

Given our current estimate of the probability of the formation of life, and our guess of the age and size of the universe, the odds that life would already exist are incalculably high.

And you would argue statistics with me? You are accepting probabilities that are utter guesses. Until the past few years, we had not even known if there were any other solar systems with planets. How can you propose the probability of something when you have no idea of the basic postulates to form an opinionated guess upon? Ask a dozen different scientists what the probability of life elsewhere in the universe is, and most will couch it in very measured words - the data is just not available.

I believe we must have been created.

A pointless statement in this debate - faith is not in question here (and a belief based on insufficient data is one founded on faith). What is in question is the relative probability that life is on Europa. I merely state that we do not yet know how common life *is*, and thus cannot predict the most simple answer.

--
Evan