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Europa's Ocean Chemistry Could Be Earth-Like (discovery.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Alien life in the universe could be close to home, swimming around Europa's ocean. The idea has been floating around scientific minds for more than a decade: beneath the icy surface of the Jovian moon could slosh a deep, wide ocean with the perfect environment for life to develop. In new research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, NASA scientists studied how the chemical composition of the Europan ocean may have evolved and what chemicals it possibly contains, assuming similar geochemical processes as on Earth are at play. Europa is thought to possess a rocky core fractured with deep cracks that have filled with water. Since the formation of the moon, the core has continued to cool, creating more cracks and exposing more rocks to chemical processes with this water."We're studying an alien ocean using methods developed to understand the movement of energy and nutrients in Earth's own systems," said planetary scientist Steve Vance, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The cycling of oxygen and hydrogen in Europa's ocean will be a major driver for Europa's ocean chemistry and any life there, just it is on Earth."
Life is a process and any substrate that facilitates that process qualifies as "alive." See: Code of the Lifemake for a illustration of that.
Shh.
"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE."
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
This was hinted at much longer than a decade ago:
"The idea that Europa and other ice-covered bodies in our solar system might possess an ocean of liquid water under a crust of ice was first proposed by John S. Lewis in his paper Satellites of the Outer Planets: Their Physical and Chemical Nature (which appeared in Icarus, vol.15, 1971)." (source: https://www.math.washington.ed...)
And I recall Carl Sagan talking about life on Europa in his Cosmos television show, back in the 80s.
But astrobiology has come a long way since then. I'm halfway through Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" and he goes into detail about the mechanisms which can form complex cellular structures given nothing but alkaline water, hydrocarbons, rock (to supply catalysts), and an energy source.
Can anyone provide a real answer to the question? I doubt it.
Someone else might find it useful today, tomorrow or 300 years from now. That's the nature of scientific research. How far would have Einstein have gotten without Newton?
Galileo Galilei named Europa(moon) and if you read wikipedia, it actually makes sense. It's named after Europa, who happened to be a lover of Zeus. Zeus is the Greek God the Romans called Jupiter. Galilei figured it might make sense that the object orbiting Jupiter would be his lover.
It's a bad name today due to the nameclash with the continent. However I'm not so sure that it mattered back then. The prince in Troja was named Paris and they certainly didn't care about city nameclashes. There is an aircraft carrier named George Washington. I haven't heard anybody complaining that they confuse the ship with a human being. There are plenty of intended or unintended nameclashes. We just have to live with those because renaming would be even more confusing.
The reason Europa looks like that is because Jupiter has enough mass that tidal force from them are constantly squeezing and stretching the moon. Creating those features.
Shh.
" Can anyone provide a real answer to the question? "
For the same reason we maintain research settlements in Antarctica. Finding life in any other place would tell us a lot about the conditions in which any ecosystem and its species can survive. There would be intense study of what any species there might have in common with Earthly life, both to check for any proof of the panspermia hypothesis and to extend the extremophile envelope in which life can exist.
Can anyone explain how this research impacts anyone in any substantial way
We explore because that's what humans do, those instincts have served us well and helped us climb to the top of the food chain. Also I think you mean "practical" rather than "substantial" because finding ET will have substantial philosophical impacts on billions of people, but probably won't have any immediate practical use..
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why do we keep getting these articles about Europa devoid of any new science? Let me know when someone actually gets some new measurements or, for Christ’s sake, sends a probe to collect samples.
The idea has been floating around scientific minds for more than a decade
More than a decade? As I recall this was a major plot element of 2010, Odyssey Two, published in 1982. No doubt the idea originated considerably earlier. So, more than three decades at least.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Do you really think everyone who is religious would just declare "Well, there's life on another planet, I guess God doesn't exist"? Of course not. They'll just say that God created that life also but the Bible was detailing the creation of life on Earth. The discovery of alien life won't mean much for them.
For scientists, though, the discovery of alien life would be an enormous discovery. We already know a lot about evolution, biology, etc, but all of our data points come from one source. This would be an entirely different source to examine. Would life on Europa have cell structures like ours or totally different? Would they have DNA or another information storing mechanism? Would they have eyes similar to ours, completely different, or no eyes at all? (Life in Europa's waters might be dark and so no eyes might be needed - or perhaps their eyes evolved to "see" certain forms of radiation.) The scientific advances from even the simplest life forms would be amazing.
For everyone else, the benefits would come down the road. With a greater understanding of biology and evolution, we might be able to design better treatments for diseases or fix genetic-based ailments.
Plus, there's the "coolness" factor of discovering that we're not alone in the Universe.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I think the tidal forces are also the reason the ocean doesn't freeze.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.