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Jupiter's "Mini-Me" Solar System Grows
An anonymous reader writes "University of Hawaii's robotic telescopes have discovered 8 new moons for Jupiter, thus bringing its mini solar system to 48 total. No one knows how Jupiter dissipates the energy of these likely asteroid captures, unless it once had a massively larger atmosphere. Indeed, its ion cloud today seems to spell doom for what Sir Arthur C. Clarke indicated, is another reason to avoid probing life on Europa. ('All these worlds are yours--except Europa. Attempt no landings there.'-- 2010: Odyssey Two). As an aside, one of those NASA sites seem technically to be doing text-to-speech in a very familiar-sounding, Stephen Hawkings version [MP3] of those articles."
"Life would be underwater, in an ocean tens of kilometers deep, the radiations won't penetrate that far. So don't rule out Europa."
Just wanted to bring up a point that's not considered very often: Life here on Earth exists in some VERY harsh environments. I don't think there's a natural area of Earth that's completely devoid of life. If you go underwater deep enough, you'll find life forms that exist without any light reaching them near some very hot thermal vents in the ocean floor.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if an ocean bearing planet or moon didn't have life.
How is a radiation field going to penetrate kilometres of ice ... or even a few metres ? It can't. Timothy didn't even bother to read the original article which made NO mention of that conclusion .. he thought that up by himself.
Europa still looks good. In fact it looks like the best place to me.
Bitter and proud of it.
Jupiter's moons are all named (saith the official Internation Astronomers' Union rules) after paramours of Jupiter/Zeus. There are a few exceptions, named for the nurses of the young Jupiter.
... er... excesses, we're running out of names.
But even with Zeus's
(Saturn's moons are all titans, I believe, Neptune's are minor gods and goddess associated with, well, Neptune, and Uranus's are named for Shakespeare and Pope characters. Mostly sprites, I think.)