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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."
No reason not to look for life on Europa NOW is there? I mean, any such doom for the planetary system would probably be a few million years off?
Geez, I checked out that text to speech link and was surprised the voice was not of any higher quality. Mac users at least, have had much better text to speech quality for years now going back to the mid 90's.
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Since Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System it has influenced our neighborhood second only to the Sun.
Damnit, that's it. Jupiter and it's "friends" are creating too much havoc in this neighborhood, driving prices down, playing their music too damned loud. The police won't help, the astronomers seem to like it. Bah.
I'm moving.
Sent from your iPad.
Recent results from Galileo indicate that Callisto and Ganymede may also have vast oceans beneath their surfaces. So ruling out Europa doesn't mean that there is no life in the Jovian system.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
What makes a satellite an acceptable .. satellite? Obviously there's a size issue but is there something else that makes a particular body labeled as a satellite (In the 'moon' sense)?
I think I need a better telescope...
Jupiter through a 3" telescope.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Well for 47 it really wasn't going to be worth the effort, but for 48 I think we better make the Trip. So Lets Go!
"... but Capan, Capan, i can not Geet it oop, I got to have 30 minutes.. "
(with apologies to Scotty)
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
of orbiting Verne Troyers
/. intends to attract now readers to science articles?
and i wonder, is referring to Mike Myers films the way
solar system? is Jupiter to shortly become our second solar body, a'la 2010? c'mon, they're just satellites of a planet. I'd have thought a science poster to know the definition of a solar system.
with that cleared up, could you inform us of meaning of the new astrological term "mini-me"?
<B>note to self:</B> <I>post as html</I>
48 is worthless!
42 is the answer.
"I can't drive 55. It only goes 38."
He seems to have turned his attention from Astrophysics to producing gangsta rap
Repeal the DMCA!
The astronomy picture of the day a few days ago had a nice moving picture of Jupiter with two moons. Where did the other 46 go?
(feeble Karma saving attempt)
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Unless you somehow convert Jupiter into a mini sun.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
I cant understand that synthesized voice at all. Its worse than the old Sound Blaster 'Dr.Sbaitso', or whatever his name was. I've heard some recent artificial speech programs and they usually sound better than that. Has NASA simply not updated it in a decade or two??
48 moons? Ha! In highschool I was big enough to [insert fatjoke here]!!
I remember a couple of days in a comment that Bush approved funding for a NASA project that focused on a new form of propulsion in order shorted space travel times. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/nuclear_po wer_030117.html
(Sorry I don't know how to do a link). Anyway, my thought is develop this and use it to propel a probe to get out to jupiter and see exactly what is going on. And, of course, send people to mars :)
----
Squirrel
I salute you sir for reminding me of Dr. Sbaitso.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
why do people always fuck this up?
thus bringing its mini solar system to 48 total Considering our solar system is only 9 . . . doing you think Jupiter going overkill to compensenate in other areas which may be...um, lacking?
...it's "Hawking".
No, I know it's not important. So I'll add an "s" to the end of your name, sometimes. It won't bother you because, after all, it's not important that it's actually correct, just that I know who you are.
(REUTERS) JUPITER--"C'mere, I wanna eat ye! I'm bigger than you and I'm stronger than you, I'm higher on the food chain!" Jupiter announced today, shortly before it embarked on a moon-gobbling smorgasbord adventure.
"By jove, I think he's mad," Europa said through a spokesperson today.
The other 47 moons did not return our calls.
I suppose it will take some time and go before the official naming group.
You have any ideas? It seems theyre out of names from Roman mythology, and moved on to Shakespeare's plays and "The Rape of the Lock."
But then there's always the option of naming them all "George Forman"
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
Could your grandchildren be colonists on Pepsi? Or DiamlerChrysler?
Maybe they'll find that big black rock orbiting Jupiter that'll turn it into the second sun...or maybe Bush and co. will try to destory it since that would make solar power so much more effective...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
If orbit was the only factor then it seems as though pluto must be a planet, all of the rocks circling jupiter must be a planet, and halleys comet must be a planet to. It orbits around the sun. Very elliptically but it is still an orbit.
For those interested, here are the slashdot threads for the last two moon additions to Jupiter:
1. New Moon of Jupiter Discovered
S/2002 J1- Catchy name, eh? Beats the hell out of say, Europa or Ganymede. Incidentally, this ran on 12/28/02.
2. Jupiter's 11 New Moons
This one ran on 5/17/02.
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.
I wouldn't go that far. Space is BIG. Heck, I can walk to the corner store without having to know the placement of every stone on the way there.
He Schutze, He Scores!
Look at it, before we know it, Juptier's moons will have moons.. and those will have moons.. and so on and so forth.
One question though? What constitutes a moon? Because they say the earth only has one moon, but it has hundreds of orbiting satilites and MILLIONS of pieces of space dust circling it, so really, I think it's time to quit discovering the moons of jupiter. one last comment: how many moons does SATURN have?!?!
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
It's a SPACE STATION!!!!
what can i say, exploitative stereotypes just crack us yanks up.
"baby: the other white meat!"
rotflmao... truer words were never spake... [wiping tears of redneck glee from my eyes]
Any life on Europe is likely going to be miles deep under water. An ion cloud and radiation hitting the surface is not going to make any difference there. So, the chances for Europan life are as good or as slim as they have ever been. However, the radiation may make exploration more difficult.
Off topic, but I think Pluto is going to keep it's honorary planet title, even though it is a humongous Kuyper Belt Object. Oh yeah, it has a moon, Charon.
Even if something is a captured asteroid, e.g. Amalthea, it's size seems to determine it's classification. It is a bit fuzzy, like defining what quality is. However, if you gave me specific examples, I could tell you moon/no moon.
But yeah, leave Pluto alone...
The party's over
ceejayoz writes "A newly discovered gas cloud around Jupiter, created by ion radiation hitting the surface of Europa, has cast doubt on possible life on the moon.
The ion cloud is completely irrelevant to the chances of finding life deep in the oceans of Europa. The Earth itself is surrounded by belts of ionized radiation. Ions bombard the atmosphere hard enough for it to visibly glow near the magnetic poles. And yet life thrives in just about every Earth environment that isn't molten rock. And the original posted link about the Jovian ion torus never mentioned any hazards to Europan life.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
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.)
48 moons? I never would have pictured Jupiter being catholic. ;)
why not take advantage of the "mini solar system" and just ignite jupiter and turn sol into a binary system?
2 stars = more sunlight to grow crops, power solar vehicals, etc...
ah crap...i've been watching too much stargate SG1...
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
I was just reading that and thinking of all the radiation bombarded underwater Frenchmen, and Englishmen and at least the paleness becomes explainable ... :D But, in truth, that was highly amusing.
Who said we had to reach Europa quickly. I don't know the dynamics and physics of space travel, but why not send this device on at a slower speed, but still considerable, to save fuel on stopping it? Or maybe some internal belt fires to provide a force to counteract inertia. I'm not sure. It'd be some kind of device that rotates counterwise to the direction the ship is traveling in.
Ahh, screw it, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Actually it was State-of-the-art Text-to-speech at the time... Centigram Communications now SS8 Networks (91 E. Tasman San Jose surrounded by Cisco buildings ) started licensing the technology in 1993. It is based on a mathematical simulation of the vocal cords and voice tract and was very good in the day.
:-)
Beside the actually voice quality the system also had very context sensitive parsing and could read addresses, titles, newspaper headaline, etc. properly.
One of the major licensees was Lernout & Hauspie who sometime around 1997 bought the division from Centigram.
Everyone knows it as the voice of Stephen Hawking. We also gave a courtesy system to Governor Pete Wilson back in 94/95 when he lost his voice while campaigning.
Centigram is now long gone. It was bought by ADC Telecommunications at the height of the telco frenzy back in the summer of 2000 for $200M cash. ADC sold it to SS8 Networks a year later for ten cents on the dollar.
Easy come, easy go. Technology marches on, soon to make all current forms of government obsolete... or die trying.
Andrew
Twelve $600 2Ghz Celeron systems circa 2003 have the same (or greater) rendering power as the $5M+ 300 100Mhz SuperSparc (SparcStation 20s) cluster used by Pixar to render Toy STory in 1995. I'm having fun with Povray...
Not all ... seems the convention ran out of Titans (there are only 12). Random link from Google:
"By astronomical convention, Saturn's moons bear the names of Titans and other figures taken from ancient Greek mythology.".
LOL: there being a fair few (6000+) figures in Greek mythology. Even Jupiter won't be able to exhaust them all!
Nalfy.
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
Thank you. This is the sort of post that is sorely missing on Slashdot. Informative, a historical perspecive and polite.
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The ion cloud is completely irrelevant to the chances of finding life deep in the oceans of Europa. The Earth itself is surrounded by belts of ionized radiation.
Exactly, it just increases the chances that life on Europa will have super-powers. The Fantastic Four knows all about that. Sure, they have super-powers now but all-in-all they'd rather they didn't, especially Ben Grimm.
I will try to answer that question in my next version.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
2 was the funniest one yet. 1 was good,and without 1 there could be no 2. 3 was a let down, but 2 was great.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
True - but can life originate in such an environment? I believe life at least started in a more hospitable temperature/environment, then spread out to these tougher areas. It's kind of like how your engine runs in 4th gear, but you can't start it there, or it'll stall. Life can tolerate tough conditions once it gets a head start, but that might be asking a bit to start there.
Of course, given what little we know of the early days of life...?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Already done by Galileo. http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/europa/eurimage s.html