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Moon of Jupiter Prime Candidate For Alien Life After Water Blast Found (theguardian.com)
A NASA probe that explored Jupiter's moon Europa flew through a giant plume of water vapour that erupted from the icy surface and reached a hundred miles high, according to a fresh analysis of the spacecraft's data. An anonymous reader shares a The Guardian report: The discovery has cemented the view among some scientists that the Jovian moon, one of four first spotted by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610, is the most promising place in the solar system to hunt for alien life. If such geysers are common on Europa, NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) missions that are already in the pipeline could fly through and look for signs of life in the brine, which comes from a vast subsurface ocean containing twice as much water as all the oceans on Earth.
NASA's Galileo spacecraft spent eight years in orbit around Jupiter and made its closest pass over Europa, a moon about the size of our own, on 16 December 1997. As the probe dropped beneath an altitude of 250 miles, its sensors twitched with unexpected signals that scientists were unable to explain at the time. Now, in a new study, the researchers describe how they went back to the Galileo data after grainy images beamed home from the Hubble space telescope in 2016 showed what appeared to be plumes of water blasting from Europa's surface.
NASA's Galileo spacecraft spent eight years in orbit around Jupiter and made its closest pass over Europa, a moon about the size of our own, on 16 December 1997. As the probe dropped beneath an altitude of 250 miles, its sensors twitched with unexpected signals that scientists were unable to explain at the time. Now, in a new study, the researchers describe how they went back to the Galileo data after grainy images beamed home from the Hubble space telescope in 2016 showed what appeared to be plumes of water blasting from Europa's surface.
âoeAll these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.â
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
By the time we get a dedicated probe to investigate that moon, it is possible that bacteria and other small organisms riding Galileo could have an established population.
I'm not saying that's not what it is, nor am I contesting that a water plume could plausible explain the data that they had received from their probe, but unless they got an actual picture of what the probe could see around it at the time, I don't think it's reasonable to assume anything conclusive.
It may have been caused by some unexpected effect on the jovian planet itself that they weren't prepared to look for.
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How would a picture be of any more help than sensor data? You're far from the sun, far from the plume, what do you think a picture would show you? How would YOU know what you're looking at in such unfamiliar settings?
"It may have been caused by some unexpected effect on the jovian planet itself that they weren't prepared to look for."
Sure, it might be a herd of water buffalo playing a trick on us!
I lost track of how many solar system bodies have water plumes now. At least a dozen. Is this just another one on the list?
Is some kind of funding up for vote? Is that why they are talking about it now? And why in such terms as if it is the only one?
Americans don't trust NASA and they don't trust scientists. All they trust now is either a book written thousands of years ago, or some clown that tells them that he'll fight for them, when said clown has spent his entire career screwing over people like them, accumulating more than 1300 civil lawsuits against him.
RIP civilization. It was good while it lasted. Welcome back superstition, tribalism and savagery.
Are you suggesting a photo taken in the black of space is more accurate than a sensor that analyses the contents of what it passes through? I highly doubt a photo would add anything to this. You could perhaps question the accuracy of the sensors, but the fact that they detected water (something we've long suspected on Europa), not ammonia, or liquid nitrogen or some other unexpected substance; helps me believe that the sensor accurately identified what it passed though.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I don't think you actually read the stories. The sensors did not "detect water". They sensed some anomalies in magnetic field and plasma density which defied any obvious explanation at the time (in 1997). These scientists did some modeling and showed that those signatures can be explained by the presence of a water plume. That is certainly interesting and supports the conclusion that Galileo may have passed through or very near a water plume, however it is very different from saying that "the sensors detected water".
Well we know that Europa has water.... we've known it for some time. What we don't know, or at least what I can infer that we don't know from the article, is that the probe *ACTUALLY* flew through a plume of water... only that a water plume would be one plausible explanation for the data that they had received.
If the probe had *detected* the water it was flying through, even that would be something... but from what I was able to take from the article, no such actual detection was made... they are only inferring that it flew through a plume from the data that they have. Now maybe this inference is right, but absent any actual direct detection of it, it's still just an assumption.
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Pictures don't have to be based on visible light. My main point is that they did not directly detect any plume of water... they detected some phenomena that could be plausibly explained by flying through such a plume, but they did not actually detect any plume of water that the craft flew through.
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He might have suggested something along the lines of the extraterrestrial origin of Loch Ness monster's ancestors. Remember those photos taken a while back were not of superior quality either. This would simply end the debate once and for all.
While what you're saying is generally true, often times things that happen in space are just our best guess for several obvious reasons. In this case, they found that if they modeled a specific jet of water from a specific location at a specific temperature, it would produce the exact same sensor readings on the probe. So, no, it's not concrete evidence, like a lot of phenomena in space, it's circumstantial evidence which happens to precisely fit into the measurements which were actually made at the time. I believe those sensor measurements would be considered prima facie evidence for the probe flying through a water jet.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I would think that you'd need to establish that there was something on the probe afterwards that could reliably be identified as water, or that a chemical analysis of whatever it was flying through at the time was water vapor.
Given that the probe (to the best of my understanding) isn't designed for atmospheric exploration, I expect it's unlikely to have the instrumentation necessary to evaluate this, so I wouldn't want to conclude anything, because there's far more about the universe that we don't know than we do... and making an assumption about it only based on what we think we do know when we don't have enough direct evidence of what we're evaluating to objectively substantiate it is, IMO, nothing more than blind guesswork.
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Hubble imaged a plume several years ago, NASA has been confident that's it's happening but the new data suggests a previous probe actually flew through one of the plumes and no one realized it at the time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
We know that Io, the closest of the big 4 moons to Jupiter, is FIERCELY volcanic. This is due to both the gravity of Jupiter and the 1:2:4:8 resonance of the big 4 moons orbits. Europa is the 2nd closest. So although not likely as volcanic as Io, it is likely somewhat volcanic. This would make enough heat to keep the water closest to the surface liquid. It would also pour energy and chemicals into the water similar to the smoker vents on the floor of Earth's oceans. This is a VERY good environment for life. It is the environment in which the first life on Earth formed.
Or aliens squirting at our probe to acknowledge its presence.
Hubble imaged a plume several years ago
From that article:
We do not claim to have proven the existence of plumes
Hubble imaged something which might have been a plume.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Maybe the water plumes are actually the spouts of giant space whales. Futurama was right, the whalers just went to the wrong moon!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Now maybe it did, and their guesses are right, but because they didn't actually detect any water that it was flying through, I consider their so-called explanation to be isomorphic to them not actually knowing what happened, but being simply too proud to admit as much.
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(guess who didn't see the First Post.)
It's not an assumption for Enceladus. Cassini saw plumes, it flew through one, and it directly detected mostly water vapor there. (along with traces of nitrogen, methane and CO2) I mean, it's exciting that there are two such moons in the solar system, but I'd say that right now, Enceladus is the BEST candidate for extraterrestrial life in the solar system, with Europa a very close second, if only because we have less direct data.
Yes, that's why they do science and look for things like gravitational shifts and plasma changes that would indicate a probe flew through one.
Maybe you've heard of this thing called science, it's where they look for other evidence and rarely are thing unequivocal.
Imagine this: plume of water vapor erupts from deep within Europa, hundreds of miles high. Most of that never leaves the vicinity of Jupiter, but a little of it manages to escape, freezes, and floats around the solar system for a while.. eventually coming into the gravitational influence of a young Earth. It makes it through the atmosphere, eventually finding it's way into Earths' oceans, carrying the seeds of primitive life..
They did not assume that it was a water plume -- they hypothesized that it was a water plume and then tested that hypothesis. "We went back and looked at [the anomalous data] more carefully and found that they were just what you'd expect if we'd flown through a plume."
They also did not report that their data was conclusive, rather they literally wrote:
"We show that the location, duration and variations of the magnetic field and plasma wave measurements are consistent with the interaction of Jupiter's corotating plasma with Europa if a plume with characteristics inferred from Hubble images were erupting from the region of Europa's thermal anomalies. These results provide strong independent evidence of the presence of plumes at Europa."
It may have been caused by a giant space whale farting. Until you either demonstrate that their data is inconsistent with a water-ice plume or provide a testable hypothesis that is consistent with the Galileo and/or Hubble, however, your objection is mere hand-waving against claims that were not made.
dont feel bad man
phone poster should be banned anyway
Level of assumptions is bigger than that. It is assumed (with zero evidence) that where there is liquid water there is life.
Why assume something like this? Mainly because liquid water is a requirement for life and it is rare to find liquid water. So the possibility of finding life due to water is a zero, however those that think so do not make good headlines. Scientists who are willing to say ohhh water so possibly life make better headlines.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
My objection is to conclude that it is something like a plume of water when they didn't actually, you know, detect any friggen plume of water. It just so happens that a plume of water fits the data they have.
Given that there's vastly more about the universe that we don't know than we do, it seems more likely to me that when they didn't even directly detect the thing, it's more than likely caused by some other phenomenon that they just weren't prepared to look for at the time.
As it sits, their claim looks no different than if they had just said they didn't know what it was, except that admitting as much would at least be far more honest.
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As though it were talkinh about a moon of "Jupiter Prime".
Come to think of it, I guess it is. You could stick "Prime" after almost any proper noun in the news, and it'll mean the same thing, only it'll sound like it's happening in a sci-fi multiverse.
Give a boy a gun and you arm him for a day. Teach him how to make a gun, and the whole metaphor breaks down.
It's not exactly blind guesswork, we're not blind. We have sensors. I don't know which ones the probe carried, but I do know that they showed signals which the team in 1997 did not have an explanation for and they considered them anomalous. It now turns out that if we assume a certain water jet with certain properties, it explains the sensor measurements. That's not blind guesswork, it's educated guesswork.
Yes, we will never know what the Galileo probe flew through in 1997. But it's not exactly a stretch to say that we can see plumes shooting from the surface, we've long assumed that there is an ocean twice as large as all the oceans on Earth, so, therefore, maybe it flew through a water jet. Happens to fit the data we do have also. Yeah, it could have been a cloud of alien pee. But it was probably a water jet.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It may have been caused by some unexpected effect on the jovian planet itself that they weren't prepared to look for.
A planetary ejaculation?
not really news. i've been living here for years!
Of course, if you'd actually read the article you'd have noticed that the Hubble Space Telescope has repeatedly detected plumes of what appeared to be water-ice, so it's not as if the hypothesis was pulled out of nowhere.
That's now how science works. That's not how any of this works. Try actually reading the paper - I'll even hand it to you on a silver platter.
You appear to be awfully invested in putting words and conclusions into the researchers' report that were not written, then criticizing what was not written in order to declare that the researchers have made a critical error.
Now let's look at the words that you have actually used:
Inference: "a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning."
Assumption: "a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof."
An inference cannot be an assumption. By definition. In case you have any doubts, synonyms of evidence: proof, confirmation, verification, substantiation, corroboration, affirmation, attestation.
Futhermore, they did not even infer that the probe flew through a plume. They inferred, in their own words:
"The sudden, short-duration jump in the frequency of intense emissions can be interpreted as consistent with a highly localized source of plasma, thereby supporting the hypothesis that the magnetic perturbations arise from passage through a localized plume."
Can be interpreted as consistent with != did do so. Hypothesis != assumption. Get over yourself.
I trust you can see the progression from ignorance to probable conclusion, even without providing any new data that was not already known.
And it's one thing to say that there is evidence of water plumes, but it's quite another to say that it actually flew through one while it was going off.
Sure it's possible, but in the end, they don't actually have any direct evidence to support it beyond that it fits the data that they did happen to measure. If they had been taking environmental measurements at the time that said it was flying through water vapor, sure.... but they don't They start by saying that a water plume would explain the data, and somehow morph that into a conclusion that a water plume is the most likely explanation for the data. That's what I've raised objection to.
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Welcome back! Here's a message to brighten your day!
Eat a dick.
So to prevent mass-extinction happening on our planet, you want to spread the very pathogen that causes it?
Maybe we shoud get our shit together instead. Because otherwise, going extinct is exactly what we should.
And the planet had already countless mass-extinctions. Nearly between every geological layer. It will recover. Although maybe not, if we keep going.
... to get the average coward to fight you.
Without knowing how fast the probe was going, nor how dense the plume of water, my spidey sense says "unlikely".
As it is likely the probe was going really fast, and when I think of a "plume of water" I think pretty dense, which if ever the two were to meet, the "detection" would be in the form of the probe de-compiling into it's composite parts...
That said, for very low values of plume of water, where it is more accurate to say, a very slight increase in water vapor where you might expect zero, is a more survivable event.
Also a plume "hundreds" of miles high? That would be a catastrophic event. Think about the largest volcano ever, and the largest eruption ever, and how high that was... though taking into account gravity and atmospheric density might also need to be factored in. At any rate at least the way it was written seems implausible.
Which they didn't say. You said that - it's a strawman.
But it is the most likely explanation for the data until you or someone else comes up with a more likely explanation for the data. Saying "we don't know what unknown phenomena might have happened" is neither an explanation nor a means to demonstrate that the explanation provided is less likely than some other explanation.
Stop mischaracterizing what was claimed and building strawmen. They reported measurements, built a model of a passage through a water plume, and reported that the measurements were consistent with such a model, suggesting that the measurements were supporting evidence for the hypothesis that the sorts of plumes observed by the HST were water plumes. That is all. Nothing more. Everything else is your own creation.
I'm suggesting that if they weren't actually taking measurements at the time that could substantiate such a conclusion (specfifically either photographic evidence, or else an actual direct analysis of whatever environment it was flying through at the time the anomaly was detected), it seems vastly more likely that it's because of something they haven't thought of at all.
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What data do you think they do or do not have? Have you seen the actual data? Because they're telling us that they did in fact detect something at the time, and just didn't know what it was. That sure sounds to me like the sensors have some sort of ability to measure the immediate environment around the probe. Is your argument just based on the assumption of what sensors they have, or more specifically, what sensors they don't have? I mean, this thing was designed to spend over 7 years measuring various things around Jupiter and its moons, including a probe that did directly measure Jupiter's atmosphere.
I'm suggesting that if they weren't actually taking measurements at the time that could substantiate such a conclusion
OK, but why? What's your evidence? What do you know about the sensors, their capabilities, and which ones were operating that we don't know?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If in fact they had detected the plume by sensors, then the article would have said that... but they did not. They described what the sensors *did* detect, and suggested that a water plume would be consistent with what they detected, despite not having any direct evidence of such a plume.
FTA:
Nowhere in there does it say or suggest that the sensors detected a water plume that it was flying through.
I'm not suggesting that it didn't necessarily fly through a water plume, only noting that since such a plume was not observed by any direct observation or measurement for the existence of water vapour in the environment in which the probe happened to be as it was detecting this anomaly, the statement that it supposedly actually flew through a water plume seems to be scientifically dishonest, because in reality all they know about what happened are the things that they actually measured.
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despite not having any direct evidence of such a plume.
I'm not sure where you're getting that from. The direct evidence is the whole point.
Nowhere in there does it say or suggest that the sensors detected a water plume that it was flying through.
You don't think so? It does say this:
rapid increase in the density of plasma, or ionised gas
Since you're on top of Jovian science, I'll leave it you to explain what happens to water molecules in the electric and magnetic fields 120 miles or so above Europa. I'll give you a hint in case you haven't been keeping up with the mailing lists: it doesn't stay as molecular water. See if you can deduce what it turns into.
the statement that it supposedly actually flew through a water plume seems to be scientifically dishonest
Fantastic, thanks for your opinion.
Just out of curiosity, since you know so much about the environment around Jupiter and Europa I'd like to take the opportunity to ask. What other events could have been responsible for the plasma which was measured above Europa? How common are they? Have they been observed in a similar way to the observations of apparent jets of water coming from the surface of Europa? If we know that water jets would result in such an environment, but that there may be other events which are responsible, what are the chances that this was one of those other events instead of the seemingly more likely result of a water jet getting ionized?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
No. You've merely conclusively assumed that it is something else without evidence and without even being able to suggest what it is.
You don't get to hide behind words like "more likely" when you won't give those words any effect when used by the original researchers. It works both ways.
Yeah... and even a rank amateur astronomer is going to know that when you are talking about such things in space, you are generally referring to hydrogen unless explicitly indicated otherwise.
Besides, water vapor is a *compound*, not an elemental substance, so how the heck do you think that would even work?
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I think it's more likely to be something else, yes... but that's only because I realize that there's more in the universe that we don't know than what we do know, and in absence of any direct observation of a water plume that it was flying through (actually detecting water vapour, explicitly, in particular), while I don't question that flying through a water plume is a definite possibility, I wouldn't consider it to be a particularly likely one just because I don't have any alternative explanation that is more likely.
You can't evaluate the likelihood of something from only one sample anyways.
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Yes, notice how I said molecular water, not elemental water.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Nowhere in that story did it say that the sensors detected water, however.,.. it said it detected plasma and ionized gas. It said nothing about the elemental (or molecular) composition of anything that had detected. In fact, if it had detected water vapor, there is absolutely no reason that this story would not have explicitly said so, rather than dance around it by saying that the measurements were merely consistent with having flown through such a plume.
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Uh, yeah, I agree with all of that. They detected a certain ionized gas and had no explanation for it, until they modeled what would happen to a water plume with certain characteristics. Similar to the plumes that Hubble is said to have observed. If one of those plumes occurred with certain characteristics at a certain time, then it would result in the ionized gas which they measured. I'm not sure where the confusion is at this point.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Because the ionized gas wasn't water. In fact, if were anything other than hydrogen, the article likely would have said so because hydrogen is so abundant in the universe that it is implicitly considered the default for such phenomena.
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Yeah I'm still not sure where the confusion is. I mean, if someone farts in a room before you walk in and you smell it, you know what happened without needing to have actually measured gas being released from his anus, right? We're newcomers to space travel, but I imagine that those who have been doing it for a while would fly through a cloud like this and their first reaction would be "this thing is sending up jets of water." This is the first experience that we're getting, it's not like Earth or the moon have a bunch of extraplanetary water plumes that we would have studied and measured before. We haven't, this is the first one, this is what learning looks like.
I don't think you'll see a scientist anywhere saying "I am 100% confident that the measurements in 1997 were the result of a water plume." But I bet that confidence interval is pretty high after seeing the pictures from Hubble and putting it together. So, again, I don't know what you're trying to argue about.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In fact, if it were so outwardly obvious that it had flown through a water plume as what you suggest, they would have realized it in 1997, and not just now.
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It only became obvious because of the recent pictures that show the plumes actually happen.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I don't refute that plumes happen... but in fact, there's no real direct evidence that the probe actually flew through such a plume. It matches the data, but considering they didn't actually detect any water vapor at the time the probe flew throught it, this as likely to be a coincidence as not.
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We're still going around in the circle, huh? OK.
1) They do have direct evidence. The probe measured it.
2) There would never be water vapor where the probe was. Demanding water vapor evidence as proof is stupid when it would not be in that location in the first place. What was there was the ionized gas that was evidence of the water plume leaving Europa. It was measured. It is direct evidence.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I didn't say it wasn't evidence of a plume happening on Europa... that, at least, would make sense. What I said it wasn't evidence of was that, as the article says, it flew *THROUGH* such a plume.
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Oh, I didn't realize you were getting that pedantic. It flew through whatever the plume turned into at that distance. Happy?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Or it didn't fly through a plume at all, any more than you can say that the ISS regularly flies through hurricanes.
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What NASA really needs to do is send a marine robot to Neptune or Enceladus or Europa, maybe even Titan. Equip it with a melter on its undercarriage for ice surfaces. The best chance of finding some form of life is in water, not a dry barren waste like Mars. By now, they should've realized... Mars is a "failed" planet. It almost had the potential to be an Earth, but it didn't quite take. They may (or may not) one day find fossils on Mars of some extremely early bacteria, but that's all they'll ever find. (Unless they discover some sort of evidence of visitation... but then again, why would anyone have an interest in such a boring planet... except for us)