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Europa's Acid Ice Fields
tr0llb4rt0 writes "The New Scientist reports on recent observations that suggest the ice on Jupiter's moon Europa may be highly acid with a pH of near zero, and have a surface layer of hydrogen peroxide.
Two theories have been put forward. One says that the acid has been formed at the surface layer from oceanic salts reacting with the intense radiation from Jupiter, the other that sulphuric acid is coming directly from the ocean, with the water reacting with sulphur produced from undersea volcanos.
Wilst reducing the chances of life on Europa, it is not ruling it out completely, as there are terrestrial extremophile bacteria which thrive in highly acid environments."
But I wouldn't want to live there. You try building a house in an acid field.
Man, are those black obelisks going to be pissed. Of course, they are several years behind schedule already, which probably didn't do much for their attitude to begin with.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
You can bet that if there is life on Europa, they'll most certainly be blondes :D
We should send a probe loaded with Red Devil lye to help even things out.
hydrogen peroxide...? My ears will never be full of wax again!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Mental Note...don't make Europa Landing probe out of metal...
Doh!
highly ACIDIC environments
it's acidic
Strange title considering life on Earth is thought to have been borne out of the toughest conditions.
I understand they are just saying "tough", but if life likely arose from similar (harsh) conditions, I don't think it would be that unlikely.
Key word being terrestrial. What about life forms based on silicon and sulphur (as opposed to carbon and oxygen). The theories are there, and I think we have merely begun to scratch the surface of what different kinds of 'life' may be out there.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Jupiter is an enemy planet
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Disregarding the validity of this claim (which I find somewhat questionable), if it is true, it may put some things in doubt. However, life has been seen to survive in extreme circumstances, such as undersea vents, where it is able to use the chemicals released by the vents as sources of energy. So, not all hope is lost.
Just think twice before going for a swim...
webpage
Main Entry: 1acid
Pronunciation: 'a-s&d
Function: adjective
Etymology: French or Latin; French acide, from Latin acidus, from acEre to be sour -- more at ACET-
2 a : of, relating to, or being an acid; also : having the reactions or characteristics of an acid (acid soil) (an acid solution) b of salts and esters : derived by partial exchange of replaceable hydrogen (acid sodium carbonate NaHCO3) c : containing or involving the use of an acid (as in manufacture) d : marked by or resulting from an abnormally high concentration of acid (acid indigestion)
blarg.
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was acid...other kings said I was daft to build a castle on an acid field, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the acid. So, I built a second one. That sank into the acid. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the acid, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle on this planet!
Even if there is life on Europa, they'll all be eurotrash, anyway.
If anything I would say that a highly acidic environment supports the idea that life could form on Europa. If you compare Europa to the Earth model then it seems that the acidic environment was similar to the old Earth where most of the organisms were extremophiles that did not use oxygen but sulfur and other substances. Earth didn't gain much oxygen until photosynthesis took a foothold and when that happened it killed off most of the organimsms because oxygen destroys chemical reactions that aren't suitable. Also, most of the organisms that exist today are the real extremophiles since they are adapted to deal with non-acidic/cold/hot environment since the original Earth was very hostile (I doubt my wording made any sense). So I would say that the acidity supports the thought that life could exist (especially the presence of sulfur).
Then you'd have the three pillars of West Coast civilization.
Spelunkers in caves observing extremophile bacteria that were literally eating away the cave with the sulfuric acid end products of their metabolism. Their experiments were finding levels of acid were largely driven by biological processes.
I'd still like to shoot Roy Schieder into space, if it's all the same to you.
I don't understand why someone who is marginally literate would be visiting a text-based website.
If there is vast quantities of H2O2 (Hydrogen peroxide), wouldn't that indicate the presense of life is more likely? It would indicate high levels of oxygen, since, H2O2 is obviously oxygen risk. Many farmers on earth use H2O2 to increase the concentration of oxygen in the water supply, so wouldn't that work on Jupiter as well?? Any chemists out there know the answer?
Mod +5 Drunk
Just have the probe take along bottle of Tums.
One bad monkey spoils the whole barrel.
I guess Europa's is nothing more than my girlfiend in planet form...
\\"You go hole now"
Isn't hydrogen peroxide a rocket fuel?
*hm....*
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Perhaps Sir Arthur was correct.
Why do we decide the probability of life on Europa based on life's characteristics on Earth? It's a completely different environment that has never had any contact with Earth and almost certainly has never had conditions similar to conditions at any time in the history of life on Earth. Our knowledge of biology may not even apply to anything we discover out there.
Reminds me of long, hot, trippy summernights back in my teens!
Lispy
Sounds like one hell of a trippy Margarita. I bet we can get a blender up there for less than 5 billion USD. Who's with me!
But given I've never heard of PH14, I guess you must be right!
Your completely wrong, it's a sliding scale.
7 = Neutral
7 = Base.
A Ph of 0 would burn directly through your cars engine block (solid steel!), no problem.
Mod +5 Drunk
...because your probe will melt from the highly concentrated acid bath
Sulfuric acid found on Europa was reported as far back as 1999 when this article was published on Science@NASA based on this NASA Press release. According to the article, sulfur from volcanoes on Io, another one of Jupiter's satellites, may be responsible for the environment on Europa.
Massive by Design
pH 7 is neutral. 14 is 'completely' alkaline, and 0 is completely acid. pH 1 or 2 is a fairly strong acid (concentrated hydrochloric acid, for example).
Nope. pH 7 is neutral pH 14 is highly basic pH 0 is Strong Acid
You are indeed right :
br> 0 Acid
3.5 Neutral
7 Base
pH is a logarithmic measure. Saying "A pH of near zero" is like saying "a near infinite number of people" i.e. nonsense.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
The pH is the negative of the base 10 logarithm of the H3O+ ion concentration in water. At any given point, the pH + pOH = 14, and both the pH and pOH of neutral water are 7.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
But do you think sending a metric shitload of baking soda and red food dye counts as attempting a landing? Because I, for one, would LOVE to use Europa as a gigantic science-fair volcano.
I'm not sure what to make of this. I visited Europe several times in the past few years with my Uncle Tim. I'll admit the water in Scottland tasted abit funny but the place didn't strike me as acidic. I didn't smell much sulfer either, i think the author is mistaken about that one! as for intelligent life in england there is some but not so much in france. maybe this article on acidic europe is what the hackers call a "troll"?
Do you mean Alkaline?
What scientific illiterate modded this "insightful"?
The pH scale runs from 0 to 14, with a pH of 7 being neutral. The number is actually an inverse exponent and has to do with the concentration of hydrogen ions (H+) in solution. (You could also use pOH, relating to the concentration of hydronium ions (OH-), the relationship is pOH = 14 - pH).
-- Alastair
A pH of 0 indicates a concentration of hydronium atoms in water of 1 (in moles/litre).
I think you're confused:
pH = -log10([H3O+]).
pH can be = 0 if [H3O] = 1. Of course, getting to pH 0 is mighty hard, but getting near it is very possible.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
IIRC, I think there's two scales for pH. One states that 1-4.9 is "base", 5 is neutral 6-10 is "acid". The other is 0-5 "acid", 6-10 "alkaline".
Confused the hell out of me in Bio class when the chart in the textbook was different from the charts the teacher was using on the OH lecture. Then again, it's been a few years, so I may be wrong.
Acid? What? Ok! Im Listening, go on.
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
Plenty of nice swimming, and all that rocket fuel present for the return trip.
sheesh...
no wonder Bush wants to go to Titan!
don't strike a match... we might have a second sun!
Why not just land him on Europa? "All these planets are yours. Except Europa. Attempt no landings there. But then again, since it's covered in acidic ice, poisonous gas and is so radioactive it glows in the dark, do you really want to land there?" - 2001, (new living translation).
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
This assumes that the concentration is high enough to be recovered and purified using the available local energy. That may not be the case.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such educational films as "Acid: Not just for Hippies Anymore" or "Hydrochloric Acid Dissolves all Evidence."
Two theories have been put forward.
You cannot have two contradictory possible explanations and have them both be theories. What you have are two hypotheses.
The hypothesis that fits with the evidence might become a theory.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So there really is *no* chance of intelligent life on Europa.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
Not quite. pH is a scale for dilute acids and bases. 1M HCl would have a pH of 0. I've gotten 1M on my hands before...it's not that bad. Concentrated HCl is in the negatives as far as the pH scale goes. (pH=-log[H+]) The H+ concentration would be the same as the acid concentration, in this case 13M. -log(13)=-1.11
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Kinda misread that as "Europe's acid ice fields" and I was like, acid, ice and fields are all good together in the same sentence, and in my own backyard too.
If it is possible for organisms to survive this kind of acid here on earth, are there organisms that can survive zero pressure, low temperatures, and high background radiation?
What if some bacteria escaped earth's atmosphere -- maybe a meteor kicked it up, or it was randomly carried by wind up and out of the reach of earth -- and settled on Europa, Mars, Venus, or some other planets?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
IIRC, I think there's two scales for pH. One states that 1-4.9 is "base", 5 is neutral 6-10 is "acid". The other is 0-5 "acid", 6-10 "alkaline".
The "other scale for pH" you're thinking of is pOH. Just subtract a pH level from 14 and you have the equivalent pOH level.
I was wrong. Thanks to all who posted informative responses without being too much of a jerk.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
that we've become more obsessed about life on other planets, than life on our own planet ?
Sooner or later we'll just be what we've created in the movies: A group of living things going from planet to planet stripping it of its resources.
Sunny Dubey
...there are terrestrial extremophile bacteria which thrive in highly acid environments."
:)
Let's leave the Haight out of this, shall we?
Ahh, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing it up.
Completely? There are pH values outside of 0-14 range.
"So, the answer is, although pH TENDS to range between 1 and 14 for most household chemicals and substances encountered in natural earth conditions, there is nothing which fundamentally restricts it to this range even at 25C."
Let's gather 'round and examine why this joke failed.
1.) I didn't use the term "ice fields" at all in the post. A line like "i saw no ice fields in dublin!!" might've been nice.
2.) A reader thought I was actually dissing prestine Scotland water.
3.) Another reader made a pre-1975 SNL reference. I thought that show started in the early nineties, the brainchild of Adam Sandler.
Actually, if YRTFA, it mentions three theories. The third is that the sulfur came from Io.
Wilst reducing the chances of life on Europa, it is not ruling it out completely, as there are terrestrial extremophile bacteria which thrive in highly acid environments."
Such as UC Berkeley.
or Canada... same thing, really.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2533735
Saturn Moon 'Could Look Like Sweden'
By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News, in Seattle
A probe due to land on Saturn's moon, Titan, could discover a world that looks "a little bit like Sweden or Northern Canada", one of the mission's scientists said.
The Cassini spacecraft is due to reach Saturn in July after an epic journey lasting seven years.
On January 14 next year, the American orbiter will send a European lander parachuting down to the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan - one of the most mysterious bodies in the Solar System.
No-one knows for certain what the probe, called Huygens, will find as it drops through Titan's smoggy methane and nitrogen atmosphere which is four times thicker than the Earth's.
But scientists have found new clues using the Earth's biggest radio telescope as a giant radar to bounce signals off the moon's surface.
Images from the 300-metre wide Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico indicate the presence of seas and lakes - but not of water. These would be seas of ethane and methane liquified by Titan's frigid surface temperature of minus 179 degrees Celsius.
If Huygens lands in such a lake of liquid lighter fuel it will float on the surface, taking photos and collecting data. Scientists hope the probe would also survive an impact on soft ground or snow, but landing on a hard or rocky surface would destroy it.
Dr Ralph Lorenz, a mission scientist based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, yesterday described what he expected Huygens to encounter.
Despite Titan being such an alien world, its physical appearance was likely to be similar to parts of the Earth, he said.
He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Seattle: "I think what we'll see is a rugged, but muted landscape.
You don't have the sort of freeze and thaw shattering process that gives you lots of sharp mountains.
"I think we'll see a lot of impact craters. Impact cratering occurs everywhere in the Solar System and on Titan, being a fairly sluggish environment, erosion is fairly slow.
"A lot of these will be filled with liquid to form circular lakes, rim-shaped lakes, bullseye lakes; horseshoe lakes. So I think we'll see something maybe a bit like Sweden or Northern Canada."
He said the probe would hit the surface at five metres per second. "If we landed on a solid lump of ice or a rock then its got to be all over," said Dr Lorenz. "If we landed on snow or something like sand then we should survive and continue to transmit data."
Nearly half the size of Earth, Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a thick atmosphere. Scientists believe there may be a deep layer of water ice beneath the hydrocarbon surface.
An intriguing possibility is that asteroids or comets hitting the surface might have melted the water ice and cause it to mix with the methane and ethane. This could theoretically give rise to organic chemicals - including amino acids, the precursors of life.
Dr Lorenz said 20 gaseous organic chemicals had been detected on Titan, and many more may exist in solid form on the surface.
However he thought although the first steps towards biology may be seen on Titan the world was too cold for the development of life itself.
"If you were to introduce microbes down there they might survive, but the question of how life evolves is a different story," he said.
The chemical composition of the Europan surface as revealed by earth-based spectrascopy may bear little resemblance to the bulk chemical makeup of the surface ice or ocean beneath. Photochemistry due to Jupiter's radiation environment only operates very close to the surface. How anyone can come to the conclusion that the result is "bad for Europan life" when such life may lie many kilometers beneath the surface is beyond me.
an ill wind that blows no good
Oh yes! I want to have your babies. You have any idea how MUCH it annoys me when people can't tell the difference between a theory and an hypotesis in science?
Sorry, got a bit carried away, that's one hell of a pet pevee of mine.
close....
pH = -log([H+]), where [H+] is a usual way to denote the Proton/Hydrogen cation concentration. So for pH 7 we have the natural concentration of 10e-7 mol/l of H+. The pH may however be larger than 14 for very strong bases and smaller than 0 for strong acids. For the latter case, it simply means that [H+]>1 mol/l. Concentrated hydrochloric acid has a negative pH e.g.
Also, Hydronium ions are hydratized H+, H30+, while OH- are called hydroxide ions.
the most sexp i get is my paren-mode.
Anyone else parsed the title as : "Places in Northern Europe where they have giant acid parties" ?
Okay, it's been a while ('98) since I dabbled in chemistry, but don't you hit a kind of asymptote at some point?
As far as I remember, pH is only valid in a water sollution (although there might not be much actual water), and at some point you simply cannot make it more acidic/basic, as the H+ or OH- ions have absolutely nothing to bond with.
Or am I just talking out of my ass here?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
We named our new email server Europa. I guess I know how it will die now, don't I?
Roy Schieder, maybe; but I'd rather shoot Rob Schneider into space...
At first I read the headline as "Europe's Acid Ice Fields" - And I thought we had some real news!
"Jupiter's moon Europa may be highly acid with a pH of near zero"
Now we know why we shouldn't set up a base there.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
doh..., i forgot
so suppose you have 10mol/l hydrochloric acid, HCl. It will be almost comletely dissociated, hence you have a H+ concentration of 10mol/l => -log(10) = -1. so the acid has a pH of -1.
the most sexp i get is my paren-mode.
And yet, oddly, there are no blondes.
--- Ban humanity.
Boy, you're stupid.
I really doubt anything could have escaped earth's gravitational field.
Remember that rockets etc use continuous trust to get out. If something gets "kicked up" by a meterite it will not have continuous trust but only an initial velocity which will keep decreasing from the earth's gravitational force and the drag from the atmosphere. Also the air drag forces are proportional to velocity, so the fastest the initial velocity is, the faster it will get decreased by air drag.
Now the problem is not only excaping from the atmosphere, one must escape from earth's gravity as well. That is a piece of debree that escapes from the atmosphere, will likely end up in some kind orbit around earth. In order not to get caugh in such an orbit, the piece of debris must be going even faster!
If you assume that these processes of debris getting "kicked up" are more or less random, it follows that if a highly unlikely thing such as a piece of debris escaping earths gravity has happened, than the less unlikely thing, that is a piece of debris escaping the atmosphere and getting caught in earths orbit would happen much more often. But, as far as i know, nobody has found earth debris in orbit around earth (excluding of course man made stuff). So it is pretty safe bet to say that no piece of earth has naturally escaped the earth atmosphere.
I fail you boy for being a geek. it was 2001 that the obelisk was found on the moon, but we haven't gone to the moon in 30 years so we don't know if it is there or not. Second it was 2010 when the second start was formed out of jupiter. WE got time left.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"I'm a Perlist, don't you recognize my outraguous code, you silly king" ;-)
I am no chemist, but with all the hydrogen peroxide on the surface, we just need to send an initial landing party of astronauts with lots of cuts and scabs.
As soon as the H2O2 hits the infected areas, instant oxygen and water!
A few hundred battle-scarred individuals and we'll have an inhabitable atmoshpere.
Okay, so either we're talking about Syd Barrett or H.R. Giger .
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
I mean they have acid for blood, right?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Wouldn't this combination of abundant peroxide and sulfuric acid, make for easy 'fuel' production?
IIRC, you can use a catalyst to crack peroxide into steam and O2. And I know SA is like the 'Mister Log' of chemicals; but I am pretty sure it can be made to exothermically react with water. ['NEVER pour water into concentrated SA' warnings, et al.]
I think I just invented the 'far-toxide' rocket. [typed while digging around to find IP attyn's bcard]To sum up:
Anyone chemically-enabled out there do the math and figure out how much output you get from it? That involves invoking knowledge which makes me think of a green compliment to tortilla chips, and not much else.
Another thought- environmentally powered 'melt' for a probe?
Look it up on google. They live in house of the lighted cave in mexico. They're a symbiotic relationship between a fungi and an archaebacteria. fascinating stuff. they hang like giant loogies from the ceiling waving back and forth in the gentle breeze eating sulfur off the roof of the cave.
a ro wicz6.jpg
r oh abitats.htm
http://www.geo.utexas.edu/chemhydro/Annette/pis
http://www.geo.utexas.edu/chemhydro/Annette/mic
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
it's proven as fact that Earth got meteorites originating on Mars.
the only way to prove it worked the other way would be to find meteorites on Mars that originated on Earth... but we dont have the resources to do that yet.
heck, we might have meteorites on Earth that originated on other solar system bodies, but we dont have enough data to make sure yet.
so i wouldnt discount the remote possibility that one of the big meteors that hit Earth during prehistoric times could have kicked up enough debris out into space, and that some of it might have found its way to Europa, and other solar system bodies.
that we've become more obsessed about life on other planets, than life on our own planet ?
To really understand something, it helps to know where it came from. Finding a second instance of life in the solar system could help us better understand how life on Earth originated. We have theories about how nucleic acids led to simple replicating 'organisms', but to find one on a world like Europa or Titan would be invaluable in determining whether these theories are right or wrong.
Sooner or later we'll just be what we've created in the movies: A group of living things going from planet to planet stripping it of its resources.
Which resources? All the sunlight that gets radiated to empty space? Or the water and minerals on the lifeless worlds that might compose 99% of the planets in the galaxy? Besides, if (as the tone of your post suggests) you believe that life is the most valuable resource that Earth contains, shouldn't we be exporting it to those places that don't have any?
Well, maybe someday we will extract the oxygen from Mars and Europa for our own purposes.
If you ever get a severe burn that removes the top layer of skin, first aid will include an airtight dressing. Oxygen on unprotected tissue hurts.
By the time you get past the lungs, oxygen is locked into special carrier molecules and shuttled to mitochondria. Most parts of your body aren't exposed to it, and even so there's cumulative cell damage from oxidation that's been theorized to be a cause of aging.
We've adapted to it, even "learned" how to get energy from it, but we did that with wrapper layers.
Oxygen-releasing algae were the ultimate environmental catastrophe.
It's not like anyone else is using those resources.
Also, Hydronium ions are hydratized H+, H30+, while OH- are called hydroxide ions.
/.)
Of course, you're right.
(Note to self: finish morning coffee before posting to
-- Alastair
...welcome our acid drinking overlords !
(Well somebody had to say it...)
This is plain wrong. Quite the opposite is true.
To leave earths atmaosphere AND its gravitational force you just have to be accelerated above escape-speed (look in any physics school-book about that one) and the impact of a meteorite is likely to speed some rocks up enough.
On the other side to enter an orbit you need less than escape speed, thats correct, but you have to look what the characteristics of an orbit are. its an elypsical path around another object in space (or better the combined center of gravity)
where the object passes through the same point in space (relative to each other) every circulation.
So if a rock is accelerated on impact with less than escape-speed, one of this points is the origin, which happens to be on te planet surface, which means on circulation later (or more likely much sooner since it will approach from the other side) it will hit it again -- boom -- end of orbit -- recombination !
To enter a real orbit you have to get distance between you and your planet, and then gather up speed sideways, to not hit it again - for example by rocket thrust or another collision (very unlikely)
The only case where this doesnt happen (and the only case of past-impact-matter being in a stable orbit i know) is when the "rock" getting thrown out is so huge, that its mass inflics the whole planets movement itself, splitting one planet into 2 literally.
They say earths moon was created that way by impact of a 3rd planet several thousend kilometers in diameter.
What if some bacteria escaped earth's atmosphere -- maybe a meteor kicked it up, or it was randomly carried by wind up and out of the reach of earth -- and settled on Europa, Mars, Venus, or some other planets?
Basic celestial mechanics would suggest that if anything were ejected from Earth, it would be very unlikely to have enough energy to escape much beyond Earth's orbit, and would, more likely, decay toward the Sun instead. That's the hypothesized mechanism for the few (terrestrial) meteorites which have been identified as having Martian origin. Therefore, based only on the sequence of planets from the Sun, we'd expect Earth ejecta on Venus and Mercury, but probably not Mars, and probably not on any of the outer planets' moons. Additionally shrinking the probability of hitting an outer planet's moons is the large gravitational well from the outer planet itself. Add then, to that, the difficulty of getting through the asteroid belt without being deflected, and it becomes not impossible, but overwhelmingly improbable that anything from (geologically modern, life-bearing) Earth has made it to Europa.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
There's no asymptote; the pH/pOH scales are logarithmic, so the ion concentrations change exponentially with pH and pOH. Asymptotes occur for functions like 1/x^n, not 10^x.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I guess all our base don't belong to Europa!
*dodges thrown tomatoes*
SIGFEH
What we have here is the worlds largest battery! what we need to send is lead. Instant power source for the entire planet.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
There is a limit to pH, but it is not so hard and fast. Since pH refers to concentration in water, it is possible to displace more and more of the water with acid solute. There should be either a limit of solubility for the solute or a notion of all solute, no water that limits the extreme of pH for a given solute.
You should make sure that third base isn't your own ass before offering answers. pH is not a scale with hard limits at 0 and 14.
Here is a guide to posting.
1. Collect clues
2. Double check
3. Post
4. Profit
With concentrated acid for blood... Don't look into the egg! Don't look into the egg!!!
Acid and all that. but what about the mountain made of diamond?
Interesting aside: Professor Peale narrowly made the window before Voyager took the now-famous pictures. He had done some work earlier on Earth's moon, then applied the same calculation to every moon in the solar system. But for historical reasons, orbital data about the Galilean moons are recorded differently from those of every other moon in the book where Professor Peale looked up the numbers to check each moon. He only noticed this months later, and when the calculation showed the possibility of a volcanic Io, he had to rush to try to get his prediction published-- ANYONE can write a paper explaining why a given moon is volcanic, but Professor Peale had actually predicted that Io was volcanic before anyone knew if it really was.
Anyway, the idea that Europa has a rocky center (with a molten interior) doesn't seem very likely to me. I've sent an e-mail to Professor Peale asking what he thinks, but I just did that, and he has not replied yet.
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS--EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."
/.! Damn you to helllllll!)
"SERIOUSLY. THE WHOLE PLACE IS COVERED IN ACID. WE LOST FIVE CRAFT BEFORE WE FOUND OUT."
"WE'RE JUST SAYING."
(ps - pretend this text isn't here. It's just lowercase stuff meant to get around the lameness filter so's I can tell this (admittedly lame) joke. Damn you,
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
Flawed idea there, if I just get a big enough rock, we'll be getting rocks having escape speed for this solar system, let alone escaping this puny planets orbit, so getting rocks further out isn't a problem. And in fact NASA had a calculation showing that so many kilogram or tons of earth material were dropped on mars each year. Forgot the exact number, sorry.
Quickshot
May not be good for life forms terribly similar to those here on Earth. But then again how likely is it that life's the same everywhere? Why not nitrogen, silicon, or for that matter argon based forms?
~M
(artiloop.blogspot.com)
Does this mean Dr. Chandra = JAFO?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Well, all that acid on Europa certainly explains David Bowman's trip during Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.
Isn't that used to make blondes? I'm sure, the cosmetic industry would like to have a word with Mr. Bush about NASA's future plans...
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
It's known that bacteria can survive in a harsh evironment, for instance in the Rio Tinto, or in undersea vents, but that bacteria more than likely originated from somewhere else and then adapted itself to the harsh surroundings - in other words it already had a head start. It may be more difficult for a new life form to evolve from scratch in a harsh evironment.
Highly acidic, surely.
Powered by onion juice.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Hmm, creatures able to withstand powerful acids, maybe using it for, say blood.... I can't place my finger on it... sounds familiar.
A completely seperate _Domain_ of life, only recently delineated from bacteria an eukaryotes. Analysis of acid mine drainage sites have found these microbes living in pH -3.5, and actually actively drive down the pH themselves. See http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/archaea/archaea.html.
Jill Banfield, a Macarthur Grant recipient, has done quite a bit of work on this.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Thats probably what happened to Io, some punk alien kids came and dumped an asteroid sized chunk of baking soda onto it.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
C'mon Mods, I'm flattered that at the time of this post someone modded my post +1 Informative, it was a waste of a Mod Point. Half a dozen of others said more-or-less the same thing I did, on top of that, what I said was only half-accurate.
Anyone with points left, feel free to mod my parent post back down, hell, mod it as redundant.
and work out why your trolls aren't even trolly enough to get modded as such... What's worse than getting a negative moderation??? Being totally fucking ignored, perchance...
On surface of Europa; the ice melts you!
why some hypothetical 3rd planet? why couldnt it have just been mars colliding with the earth?
And I fail you! In 2001 there were monoliths, not obelisks, not quite the same thing!
To an analytical chemist, a pH of 0 is nonsense--it's too imprecise to be of much use. However, a pH of 0.0 is indeed possible.
I'm not sure whether abandoned mine waters count as natural, but solutions with a pH of -3.6 are known to exist outside the laboratory.
Given the monster Van Allen belts and the radiation environment, could humans even contemplate getting near Europa without getting fried?
I had asked for a "second opinion" on some filling replacements and this dentist matter-of-factly states "don't know if it is that urgent as you don't drink soft drinks." I wondered how he knew that, but it seems that Cokes and such and do a number on your teeth, and it isn't just the sugar.
Yep, it could be a great way of powering anything, including a hopper.
Maybe a James Bond style hopper. It looks like it might be possible to build something that is not thermodynamically efficient, but has an insane thrust to weight ratio. If fuel is easy to come by, who cares about efficiency?
While I lack any real idea of how to build a spacecraft, maybe a small rig couldn't afford the overhead of a system that could refine H202 into something more potent. Would catalytic decomposition be enough? Would it be possible using the stuff on Europa?
According to our wiki friends, H202 can be some nasty stuff, which makes it fit right in on Europa!
In my opinion going to Europa would be a waste of resources. If we have X available to do space exploration, we can do a lot better than going to some hell hole in a bad neighborhood.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Little Johnny was a boy,
He isn't anymore,
For what he thought was H20
Was H2SO4.
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
Note I'm not saying it is *impossible*, just improbable. With a big enough impact, ejecta could have enough energy to escape the solar system, but an impact with that amount of energy is very, very improbable. Given that it takes a fair amount of energy for ejecta to escape Earth, one would expect to see more terrestrial material on Venus than on Mars, but it does not make the ratio 1:0. There's a big difference between improbably and impossible, and, regrettably, many people don't understand that.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The article mentions that they think the acid is H2SO4. I know from putting aluminum flashing into H2SO4, that it doesn't dissolve. It just sits there even if you add water or heat the acid. That's why I was annoyed when the aluminum rowboat dissolved in the acid lake in the movie Dante's peak. It would have been fine on that lake for days and days if not longer. I don't know if it is because the aluminum coats itself with aluminum oxide and oxygen and sulfate both have a -2 charge, or what. I know HCl eats aluminum lickety split though as does HNO3. I think they should just make the lander out of aluminimuminiminimuninimimum
Eat at Joe's.
The problem is that we CAN'T define laws on things we havn't observed. We can't make up new laws on how life forms based on what we MIGHT see IF it happened. Observations are called that for a reason: They're observed, not made up.
Until we go down there and something tries to eat us or something, all we can do is pontificate on our existing knowledge.
Not likely due just to the sheer amount of acid that's been found now. NASA then thought it was little more than trace acidity, which could easily be explained by fallout from Io. But newer observations show that the acidity on Europa is far and above even the most generous estimates, and the distribution of the acid suggests strongly that it's comming UP out of Europa's interior, and not being deposited there by an exchange of material with Io (although that could certainly be a contributing factor, it's not a significant one).
Earth has three times Mar's gravity, meaning it takes a much bigger (and rarer) impact to throw material from Earth out into space.
Material blasted off from Mars gets to ride the sun's gravity down to Earth orbit for a pot shot at us. A meteorite blasted off from Earth has the sun working against it, and it has two ways to get there (bearing in mind that it gets all its energy during the impact, and that it only gets an invisible fraction of the impact force):
1. Get accellerated to a fast enough speed that it will spiral outwards from the sun at least as far as Mar's orbit.
2. Get blasted all the way out past Mars, and spiral inwards to hit Mars.
Provided it gets out there, Mars is a smaller target, but that may be balanced by the fact that it lacks a large moon that could block or deflect impacts. Phobos and Deimos are there, but that's like two bullets colliding on the battle field. Sure, it can happen, but don't expect it to save the general.
But we're talking about Europa, which is another ballgame alltogether. Our little rock (With its very fragile cargo of life, which will be VERY lucky not to be reduced to a nondiscripb blob of carbon before even leaving Earth) has to get all the way out to JUPITER's orbit.
Once there, it has to survive a plunge through the Jovian system itself. Jupiter's gravity sucks up most of what goes through, and barring that, there are still three other major moons and a host of smaller objects to dodge. It's almost like firing blind into the air and having the bullet come down on one specific fly buzzing around an Elephant a mile downrange.
Can it happen? Sure.
Is it likely? A bit more likely than me walking out the door of this room and defracting ten degrees off normal.
embed your lander in a large quantity of something that has pH 14. The heat generated in this reaction could get some serious melting done. Or use this as a source of energy.
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
> why couldnt it have just been mars colliding with the earth?
Because Mars would then not exist.