Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
Also, its probably the easiest place we could colonise.
Holy hell! Colonisation is something that shouldn't even be considered, let alone attempted! It should be left as pure as possible for study, not contaminated by an excessive human presence.
While I agree with some of the sentiments, that astrobiologists tend to get excited too easily, you are missing quite a few key points here.
First, Europa vs. Venus or Jupiter: Jupiter lacks liquid water (thought necessary for life) and a reasonable chance for biotic elements to come together (there is a lot of space, there, and not much carbon, nitrogen and oxygen). Venus is much too hot. Neither planet has any serious proponents for (present day?) life. Neither does the Moon, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus or Pluto. Titan and Mars are the two other possibilities, as generally held by the planetary community. Oh, add to that Callisto and Ganymede, which also have liquid water. (Note that Juptier has icey moons, plural, not just Europa.)
We know that there is more than ice on Europa. We know that there are surface contaminents (either salts or hydrogen sulfide from the magnetosphere). We also are pretty sure, based on mangetometer readings, that there is liquid water under the ice. And under the icey shell, there has to be rock, based on the density and the moment of intertia results.
Jupiter's radiation belts are irrelevent. No one is forgetting them, they don't matter a whit to Europa's ocean. Radiation only pentrates about 10 cm of ice. It is not going to penetrate 1-10 km of ice. And you can't make the radiation strong, it's charged particles. Their energy is set by the pickup speed at Io (57 km/sec). You'd have to spin Jupiter up to increase the energy. That gives you the insane problem of how to strip off that angular momentum and how to keep a ball of gas from breaking up at that rotation speed (Jovian planets are already visibly oblate from their rotations.)
My last thought is a matter of personal opinion, but I wanted to voice it: I find your preferences for colonization and extra-solar exploration over astrobiology naive. Getting outside the solar system or sending people to other planets is orders of magnitude more expensive and difficult than sending a simple probe to Europa (which is already $1 billion). I mean, I'd love for NASA to develop faster than light drives, but it isn't realistic to expect them to focus on that over exploration of our system.