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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
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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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'