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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."
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.
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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
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
At the moment it is just the resolution of our imaging techniques that limits what we call a satellite. There are bound to be hundreds, if not thousands of smaller bodies around Jupiter that we haven't spotted yet.
Let's just hope that they fit future spacecraft with radar, or send a man up the main mast.
Best wishes,
Mike.
My Name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.
Say whatever is in your mind freely. Our conversation will be kept in strict confidance. Memory contents will be wiped after you leave.
So, tell me about your problems.
We should look for life on Europa but I thing it is not the right moment. We lack technical capabilities for now. A probe looking for life on Europa should travel the distance between Earth and Jupiter, land on Europa, burn its way through a very thick layer of ice (maybe 10 - 20km, swim autonmously trough a dark ocean probing for life, find its way up to the surface and transmit data back to earth. I think this is out of our technicak capabilities for now. Maybe latter.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
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?
Although a halfway step would be nice - a high resolution Europa orbiter would be very useful. Then we could see exactly what the whole surface looked like, map it with radar and so on. Perhaps we could map the heat flow through the surface from that projected Europan ocean, work out what trace materials form those dark streaks, perhaps it would even be able to remote sense organic compounds that have come to the surface.
Still we can at least rule out a manned mission - the Jovian magnetosphere would cook any Frank Pooles and Dave Bowmans long before they got to Europa.
Best wishes,
Mike.
(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.
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.
That's a point... is a triply posted story a tripe?
-Mark
It's a SPACE STATION!!!!
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.)
Yeah, but they're working on this technology using the work done at Lake Vostok as an example.
Huh?
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
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...