Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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)
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.
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).
Ph 14 would be the opposite of Ph 0. It is considered the most extreme side of the BASIC scale (opposite of the ACID side). It does exist, but the original poster was wrong in what he thought was the scale..
The scale goes:
Ph0 - Most acidic Ph7 - Neutral Ph14 - Most Basic
Ph0 Ph7 Ph14
Acid Neutral Basic
Mod +5 Drunk
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.
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.
Same thing, different text book. It is called Alkaline, or "basic"..
Mod +5 Drunk
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.
How so? pH = -log10([H+]) -- negative base ten log of hydrogen ion concentration. A pH of 0 would imply:
pH = 0 = -log10([H+]) ==> [H+] = 1 mol/liter.
H+ solutions which are more concentrated than 1 mol/liter will have pH values below zero.
A "logarithmic scale" means that linear changes in the scale indicate exponential changes in some underlying quantity. For every change of 1 in pH number, the concentration of the solution changes by a factor of ten. Just because the graph of log(x) goes to minus infinity as x goes to zero doesn't mean a logarithmic scale has some kind of asymptote.
Learn before you post.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Roy Schieder, maybe; but I'd rather shoot Rob Schneider into space...
"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.
And yet, oddly, there are no blondes.
--- Ban humanity.
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 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?
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?
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.
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.
With concentrated acid for blood... Don't look into the egg! Don't look into the egg!!!
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.
Well, all that acid on Europa certainly explains David Bowman's trip during Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.
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
Because a key requirement for a molecule to be the base of life is it's ability to polymerize - ie form long-chain molecules. Carbon is very good at this at earthlike temperatures, which is why it became the basis of life on Earth. Silicon, I hear, can be convinced to do so at high temperatures, which means it could concievably give rise to some sort of life.
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?
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.
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;}