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Europa May "Nurture" Life
Bullschmidt writes: "This article suggests that Europa may not only have the water to support life, but also heat, generated from the intense tides of the Jovian moon, to not only support, but possibly nurture, life. The article also suggests that the same forces that heat the water may be also responsible for melting the icy crust of Europa, causing its characteristic cracked surface."
Would that make it Icy-hot? (somehow I doubt that stuff would support life very well)
FREP!
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I wonder what life on Europa might have in common with the creatures that live near thermal vents in the ocean floor. The root of the ecosystem there is a type of bacteria that gets energy by breaking down hydrogen sulfide coming out of the vents.
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i was just watching 2001 this afternoon :)
Ceci n'est pas un post
I'm trying to figure out why CNN ran that article. I don't mean to be cranky, but there was no news there. Everything has been reported before (Yes, there is almost certainly water under Europa's ice. Every time Galileo has made a pass over Europa the evidence gets stronger for that, but Galileo hasn't made any passes in the past month or two.)
/.er who relayed this news story, but CNN.com, who should have known better.) I'm thinking it was a really slow news day.
Worse, the research was really poor. It isn't hard to get the basic facts straight. I mean, Galileo went into orbit in 1995, not 1997 (hence the 1996 reference they gave which mentioned Galileo already in orbit by then). The book was 2010 (also made into a movie), not the dreadful 3001.
As for melting at the surface... not likely. Most researchers seem to think that the melting is occuring farther down, and some of it may rise up to the surface occasionally. (Others think its just warm ice convecting, for the most part.) Admittedly, I'm probably biased by my officemate's research on this topic, but still. They could at least give the alternate view.
They also don't note that Europa might or might not have two of the three ingredients thought necessary for life: readily availible biogenic elements and a source or energy suitable for life (tidal heat doesn't really serve that end directly). All it has is water. Water is an important start, but it isn't all and that bears keeping in mind.
I'm really confused and miffed by this article. It really shouldn't have been published, especially not as news. (This is not meant as an attack on the
Lets get some things straight: Mars used to have vast oceans and Europa has life.
It makes better news that way.
Makes me admire Arthur C. Clarke even more than I already did. Read "2010" to get a description of how Europa could sustain life. Seems like Clarke was right all along. Sometimes I wonder if the man has some secret source of inside information...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
Recently American Scientist" had an article on possible niches for organisms on Europa. The magazine article is worth reading. Very interesting. It is pretty easy to do the calculation that shows how deep the oceans are on Europa. You can even get an idea of the ice thickness from the heat diffusion for snow, though maybe I fluked that one. Anyway, Europa is the next moon out from Io which is pretty tormented by tidal stress. The surface of Europa is amazingly flat ... like the ice isn't very thick blah blah .. you get the picture.
People have been theorising about this for about 20 years, Clarke didn't invent the "life on Europa" thing he was just astute enough to see a winning theory. I remember at the time I was surprised so few supported it ... it seemed a very likely possibility. Then when hydrothermal vents were discovered it didn't take long for people to put the two ideas together.
Actually, the likely pressure at the bottom of the ocean on Europa is likely to be similar to that at the deepest parts of the Earth's oceans. But no-one knows. Can't wait for a probe to do some searching ... even just the ice on the surface near the cracks should have heaps of biological stuff if there is life there. Also, its probably the easiest place we could colonise. I mean the temp is over 0 C and the upper layers should be ok for scuba ... and a few subs ... hmmmmmmmmm
Pete
Bitter and proud of it.
Too bad the space probe which would have answered some of these questions was cancelled in Bush's budget.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
Not to be a stick in the mud, and don't get me wrong I am no fundie who thinks Earth is the only planet with life. But honestly pretty much EVERY planet we have explored people have concocated some story or theory or whatever about how it contains life, Mars, Venus, Jupiter etc. But once we get there we realize that there isn't any life, or at least any we can detect. So my guess is once we get to Jupiters ice moon we won't find anything but ice, and hydrogen sulfide, if we are lucky.
Anyway, I would prefer to see the space dollars be spent on extra-solar system exploration or better yet, colonization or at least space tourism. Not that finding microbes somewhere else in the solar system would be nice, but the odds are against it. And is anyone forgetting Jupiter freaking radiatioon belt? Sure the ice is thick, but who knows maybe that radiation was orders of magnitude stronger a million or more years ago and all of Jupiters moons are just giant sterilized balls of .
Important question: Are they ramen, or are they varelse?
This whole idea is a big part of the plot of "2010: Odyssey Two". Soon they'll start telling us that Jupiter has a diamond core and they found a magnetic anomaly in the Tycho crater