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Melting Europa
amigoro writes "After having contaminated Earth's Oceans, it seems that there are plans to send a probe drilling through Europa's ice sheet and explore the purported ocean below the crust. The plan seems to be to find Life there. But I wonder how long the time lag will be between the probe finding life, and a leak in the radioactive heater wiping all of it out."
Jeez, can you get any more bias worked into your message?
I'd like to see the leaky probe that could rival Jupiter itself in bombarding Europa with radiation.
Awww, don't look so down. I'm sure there are plenty of other snide quips to be made about our foolish, short-sighted engineers wiping out Life As We Don't Know It.
Consider the possibility of a dihydrogen monoxide leak, for example...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Of course, its possible that the heater won't leak and that good science will be done.
There is risk inherent in every action and inaction.
This isn't news.
The amount of damage a single probe can make to an entire ecology is infinitesimal, it doesn't matter how radiactive it is. Come on, even a nuke will not destroy it! Biological contamination is a different matter, though...
Man, I wish we could mod stories. This one deserives at least:
- -1 Overrated,
- -1 Troll,
- -1 Redundant,
- -2 Flamebait
-- MarkusQand
As -1, Flamebait? Or how about -1, Begging the Question? Or -1, Troll even? Yeah thats a good one - michael, YHBT!
How about instead, we have a decent discussion on the relative merits and costs of going to Europa and drilling in it to find Life.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
So let me get this straight.
You're chaining yourself to a Tree because we're considering sending 5kg of 'radioactive' isotypes to a watery grave inside a frozen planet's 60 mile think liquid shell whose volume is greater than all the earths oceans combined.
Hello bucket? This is water drop, make some room i'm coming in...
christ do you people sit around all day _LOOKING_ for ways to complain and be outraged?
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
/. is really starting to suck with all the editorial bias on these stories. I read the article and it didn't mention anything about raioactive leaks destroying the world or anything like that.
I was under the impression this was a discussion board for tech news.
How about we just post stories and then have a discussion about the story instead of pushing some agenda. Or maybe that is too complicated.
After we remove the irrelevant ("after having contaminated..."), the admission of insufficient research ("the plan seems to be"), the speculative and hysterical ("a leak in the radioactive heater wiping out all [ life ]"), and the lame attempt at humor ("drill Sedna"?), we're left with the following condensed version of the post:
there are plans to send a probe drilling through Europa's ice
to which I respond:
"yes, that's old news".
"After having contaminated Earth's Oceans"
"But I wonder how long the time lag will be between the probe finding life, and a leak in the radioactive heater wiping all of it out. What next? Drill Sedna for oil?"
I wish the Slashdot editors could maintain at least the pretense of objectivity in which stories they post. I'm sure someone else submitted the story without the loaded commentary. I mean, even the sexing-up BBC managed to write a decent article about this.
If not that, perhaps it would be helpful for less frequent readers if editors disclosed their obvious biases: Green Party member, voting for ABB, never tires of SCO stories, Microsoft-hater, whatever.
Another option would be sub-sites for News for [insert political bent]-leaning nerds, stuff that confirms your beliefs.
And leave your personal politics out of this... Mr. Danson. Let us remeber that we are a product of the Largest ecological disaster are planet has ever seen. The mass extinction brought on by the Earth being hit by a medium size comet/asteroid/metor. She survived, I am sure Europa will survive a few 100 Kg metallic device soft landing on her surface.
But I wonder how long the time lag will be between the probe finding life, and a leak in the radioactive heater wiping all of it out.
That would be close to never. Europa isn't exactly like a small city like Nagasaki for instance. Even when we intentionally unleashed 2 radioactive devices at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we failed to wipe out all life on the local chain of Japanese islands.
Even around Chernobyl 18 years later life seems to be going on as usual.
The reactors for spacecraft just aren't large enough to cause any large scale catastrophic wipe-outs.
In all seriousness, the human animal has been wondering about his place in the universe ever since the human animal became the human animal, and the answer to "is there life other-where" is an important component, yes?
It may be a lot of money, and there may be more important ways to spend it (for some definitions of 'important', anyway), but to not seek the answer is to deny an important part of our humanness.
Not everyone buys this, or ever has. But not everyone has to, just like not everyone has to buy great art.
J.
I thought one of the arguments for crashing the Gallileo probe into Jupiter, was that they didn't want to leave it in orbit and risk having it crash into Europa, where there may be life. Deciding to drill a probe into Europa would seem to be just as risky with regard to contamination.
Forget about radation for a minute, and just think about the microbes that may still be on the probe from earth? Any chance these to be introduced onto Europa? Perhaps if there wasn't life before, we would introduce it.
In either case I find it odd that previous missions would go to extreme measure to avoid contaminating Europa and this mission plans to flat out do it on purpose.
It is really frustrating to hear this kind of ignorant nonsense masquerading as legitimate concern. The natural sources for radioactivity on Europa vastly outweigh anything man could introduce with this probe plan. The last thing we need is junk science wielded by knee jerk eco-fanatics over other Solar System bodies without justification. Stick to torching SUVs pretending you're having a positive effect instead of a negative one & leave the brain trust to get on with the difficult process of rational thought and exploring the Solar Sysetem.
The news post is such a typical anti-science message that it'd be funny if it weren't so depressing that people can be so stupid. The message obviously shows somebody who is against things they don't understand. They're probably the kind of person who opposes GM food not because it is unsafe, but because it has the word "genetic" in it.
Guess what, humans don't own jack. We share a planet with millions of other species. That fact that we are able to influence the planet more than most other species gives us a responsibility to act as caretakers. The question of exploiting other celestial bodies is moot until it becomes economically feasible to do so anyhow.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Yes, but did you see her naked? That's all that matters.
Linux O Muerte!
Guess what, we humans, as a race, own everything in the solar system. It is ours to do with as we see fit... other planets are being wasted until we make full use of them for humanity as a whole. Until and unless I'm shown proof of life on another planet, and it would probably have to be a somewhat substantially high order of life, I'm going to argue that it's our position to decide the destiny of every bit of metal, gas and rock that's floating in orbit around our sun.
... the concept of ownership is completely human. In reality, we can't lay claim to anything we can't hold on to.
Guess what
Perhaps I'm reading too far between the lines of your post, but I'd prefer to say that humanity has the potential to utilize other planets, in this system or another. Whether we ever fulfill that potential is another matter.
Furthermore, your post implies (to me) a lack of concern for other environments. I'm not one to suggest that we should not visit or utilize these other worlds, but we need to take responsibility for our actions, and the ramifications they cause. Consider the research we may be denied the opportunity for, if we were to rampantly spread and 'contaminate' other environments. We've done it over and over again on this planet, usually before we knew any better. Lets try not to do it in the future, ok ?
BTW = This is a practical concern, not some sort of fluffy feel-good 'lets not harm the martians' kind of thing.
Please whine over there about ecological disasters, and how bad we are as a species, etc...
Those signs are fucking idiotic.
Newsflash to morons: you don't need trees to make paper. Lots and lots of cheap, easy-to-grow plants are loaded with cellulose.
And yes, I grew up in a logging town, in a logging family, and I'm quite familiar with the logging industry. Chopping down trees to make toilet paper and diaper fill is utterly, utterly tragic.
As always, the real risk is that we'll contaminate Europe with microbes.
One of the points I make, when people bring up the topic of alien organisms contaminating Earth, is that Earth really has pretty advanced microbes. Microbes on Earth have had 4.5 billion years to practice infesting each other and the various high-level organisms. Likewise, our immune systems have had slightly less time to practice fighting off such microbes. All this evolution makes them pretty advanced.
Granted, Europa has had the same time to work as we have, but it hasn't had as large a playground, and most likely none of the organisms there have gone up against a mammalian immune system anytime during their evolutionary development. Nor have they gotten the chance to try to survive in as many different environments.
How is this on topic? Any organisms we send over there will wipe the floor with any Europan microbes they find. This may be a giant leap for Earthling microbes, but it's probably bad for science.
Same thing goes for Mars and elsewhere.
Upstairs Dog, Downstairs People.