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Liquid Ocean on Europa?
Ryan Finnin Day writes "A team from University of Arizona proposes an explanation for the arcs visible on the surface of Europa: a liquid sea with 98 foot tidal swells cracking the frozen surface. Also in the story, plans for a NASA probe in 2008 to use a laser altimeter to detect tidal swells. Read all about it."
..for all the Fish.
Well, they had to go somewhere right?
+&x
When I was in college ( and then for some time after that ), I regularly read two newspapers known for their journalistic integrity; the two best on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. They were the Wall Street Journal, for the conservatives, and the Christian Science Monitor for the liberal side. Their paper is one of the best, and more reasonable, and they keep the editorials on the editorial page. And there's no religious proselytizing, either.
As to Europa, I also saw the Discovery show on the probe. I guess I never realized how likely life was there ( I thought it was frozen solid ), and I didn't know that there's actually a plan to send a probe. With the geothermal vents, I think the likelihood of life there is high. To think that in thirty years or less, we could be there checking for life really got me excited. That would be one of the discoveries of the epoch. God, I get excited just thinking about it.
Plus, just think if it's advanced past the microbial stage!
Oops, gotta go to the bathroom now; just made a mess.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke
(we could be gods!)
Once, in the wilds of Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew and had to live on food and water for a number of weeks.
The Christian Science Monitor is a surprisingly unbiased news source -- more unbiased, in my opinion, than the big ones like ABC or CNN. The CSM news service has been around for a long time -- I want to say around a century now -- and has no resemblance to other Christian sources, like say the 700 Club, Rush Limbaugh, etc. Give them a chance.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
If your objection is based primarily on radiation exposure, then no conclusion can be drawn. Most terrestrial life finds radiation lethal, of course. But in the land surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, organisms (up to and including mammals) have been found that suffer no ill effects from the radiation exposure. A study on voles (basically mice) from the area revealed that the animals had experienced extremely rapid evolutionary adaptation (within a generation even, with a litter exhibiting mutations unique from the mother and from each other).
The point is that even though most organisms avoid such a conditon, others can thrive on it and many can learn to live with it. Life can carry on.
What are the fundamentals of life, as we understand them to be? Water. Carbon. An energy source. That seems to be it. We don't know nearly enough to say what *can't* work -- if deep sea archea can breathe sulfur and Russian mice can learn to live with nuclear meltdown, anything might be possible.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Jupiter has a simply huge magnetic field that traps cosmic rays and energetic solar wind particles for very long periods of time. This is bad enough that our space hardware has an difficult time with it, and I have heard the speculation that human beings could never visit the region of Jupiter without taking a lethal dose.
:)
Could life evolve or take root (transported from Earth on tektites) in the leads of Europa given the extant conditions?
As far as life developing there... we don't know what forms are possible for life. We know OUR form of life would have a problem with the radiation, but that doesn't mean that any life would have those same problems. Perhaps a different form of life could have developed that actually somehow harnessed the radiation for energy, in some sort of "radiosynthesis". Maybe far-fetched, but there are bacteria here on Earth that can survive just about any radiation you throw at them. And that's just a modification in our structure of life.
I see way too much of that when people talk about life developing beyond Earth. They're too quick to project what is true about our life on any other possibilities.
Personally, I'd love to see a form of life that thought a planet like Venus was paradise and that Earth was uninhabitable.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
the thousands or perhaps millions of years the travel in space would take would surely kill any earth life form.
Not true, some bacteria can enter a spore state, and remain in suspended animation indefinately. They've found some frozen in polar ice caps for 3 million years, that came back to a normal life cycle when put in liquid water.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
there are also things called i belive SLIMES its a bad acronym that i c/n remember right now. they are even farther removed from the photosynthosis life cycle. the disolve rocks to get energy, some scientists believe that if there is life on mars this would be what it, and it was some of the first life on earth still around.
Yes I have seen both the series and the movies. All the cats and dogs were killed off by a virus. Before they'd bring anything back to Earth, they'd send people there to study it. And then of course the lifeforms (both terran and europan) would be biologically isolated from each other, until it was safe for them to directly interact. (Afterall we wouldn't like a scene remincent of Homer's trip back to the dinosaur age on "The Simpsons" now would we? ("*AHHCHOOO!*" (Immediatly every dinosaur drops dead one by one) "This is going to cost me." *BZZZFFFT*)))
the christian science monitor is one of the most objective news sources i have ever read. i find it offensive that you automaticly assume a full third of the united states and a good chunch of the rest of the world are irrational fanatics who ignore the burden of scientific proof. the catholic church has since not long after darwin proposed evolution stated that it doesn't conflict with the teachings of the church, most protestant denominations that i know of (including the one i belong to) share this belief. You will in fact find if you do some reaserch that many scientists believe that there is some design in nature and in fact many are christians. the tolerances in the univese are SO strict to allow stars to form, produce super novas that make the elements that we need to be here that many people believe that there is no chance of them occuring naturaly, if the weight or charge of protons, electron or neutrons were off stars couldn't form the way they are, chemistry as we know it couldn't occur b/c bonds would either be to tight, to loose , or not occur at all. do your research or you are worse off than the fanatics that you defame
There's a wise old saying: "Where there's smoke, there's fire"
Of course, the most spectacular Voyager pix were those of Io (the one's with the volcanic plumes). And then there is the picture of Mimas, one of Saturn's moon. Take a look. Not a good sight to see when one comes out of hyperspace.
Your idiocy just proves KingBob's original point! You really need to research what we call "spelling" and "grammar" so that others may understand your flawed logic!
Are you a member of the Flat-Earth Society?
In other words, complex life would be unlikely.
l
The little beasties around the black spouters make incredibly efficient use of the heat energy they get. But as life goes, there just isn't a whole lot of room for variety.
The latest SciAm article on the oceans of europa (which didn't mention this cool discovery) also talked about the limitations of chemosynthesis.
Still, the life found on earth around these undersea vents is pretty impressive for what it's got to work with.
http://www.amnho nline.org/expeditions/blacksmokers/life_forms.htm
Page that talks about black smokers.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
I didn't understand this at all, until I read the article and found out that they didn't talk about my part of the world, but rather an object in space with a very similar name.
FYI, "Europe" is spelled "Europa" in Swedish (and a few other languages too).
At least, according to "2061: Odyssey Three", it was the Chinese spacecraft the Tsien. They landed on Europa to refill their propellant tanks with water, a strategy designed to get them to the Discovery faster than the other vessels by allowing them to carry a smaller payload. They were extracting water from an area where there was a warm upwelling that meant that there was only a relatively thin layer of insulating ice between the liquid water and the vacuum. Some sort of large, slow, kelp like creature emerged from the water, attracted by the bright light and started to crawl up the side of the ship. The ship toppled over and the hull ruptured. One astronaut was left, and he sent a signal explaining what happened in the general direction of the Leonov with his suit radio.
Anyway, that's according to "2061" but, as has been observed, the details of previous odyssey books have not always been treated as canon by the sequels. Rather, each book exists in its own parallel, but not identical, universe.
How does the CSM cover medical issues? I would think that any discussion of medicine would violate tenets of the CS faith...
So, that's all I meant by it.
Ah but the great thing is there's a prob already on it's way to Titan to investigate this. It the Cassini: Voyage to Saturn Project. Nice site scientifically speaking. You should check it out.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
Really? Cool! I didn't know that little tidbit. I just assumed he wrote the book AFTER he saw the white oval.
Jeez...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
98 foot waves would provide great surf, apart from the damn grazes you get from icy surface above
Erm, well, if you bothered to read 2061 and 3001 then you would understand. However, I suppose it is too much to expect :/
Actually, the reason the movie used Jupiter rather than Saturn was simply that at the time they didn't have the sfx ability to do a convincing Saturn with rings. According to Mr Clarke, anyway, and I guess he'd know...
I think it is commonly accepted among most scientists that somewhere under the Europa ice caps is liquid water. How deep and how much water may be under dispute. The ice crust is very active, and breaking apart and moving about, which is really strong evidence for liquid H2O. Assuming there is an ocean, the probe must first get through this ice layer. Several ideas have been studied, such as drilling through, melting through (either electrically or with RTG), even slamming into the ice with high speed with intents to blast/melt through parts of it. It is not even known how thick the ice is, it could be hundreds of feet, or could be several km. That requires alot of energy to get past!
Then comes the question of having the probe transmit data back to earth. Does a surface relay remain on the surface to beam info back to earth, while the 'hydrobot' goes under the water? if so, how does the bot communicate with the surface station? Does it keep a tether, or use sonic modem to echo sonar through the ice, or some other method? If a tether is used, it could be potentially several km long!
Even if the probe magically makes it into the ocean, what instruments does it carry, and what measurements does it make? An underwater camera would require light, thus floodlights would be needed. Should sonar be used to map out the ocean bottom and/or the ice crust on top? All of these require power, which is a very limited resource on a space probe like this. Also, all of these require mass, which is a very limiting factor in both getting the payload into Earth and ultimately Europa orbit.
An perhaps the most critical requirement for uch a probe is in line with Star Trek's Prime Directive. Scientists want to make very sure they don't do anything to contaminate or disturb any native biosphere Europa has. Thus, RTG's are questionable. Even drilling through the ice can be a problem.
Scientists everywhere would love to send such a probe, however its plan of attack at Europa must be very meticuously (sp) thought out, because of the cost/time required just to get such a payload to Europa. There are plans for a preliminary Europa explorer, to provide much more detail than Galileo has. Most importantly, estimates of the surface ice thickness, to see if an ice penetrator is even possible.
For more information, check out the following URL which has a wealth of Europa-related web sites.
Although there may be liquid oceans on Europa, it is a good possibility that they are not made of water. As you know, water freezes at a relatively high temperature, and vaporizes at a relatively cool temperature. "Relative" to temperatures normally found on other planets, that is.
As for Asimov, I really liked the way he chose to integrate the Robot novels with the Empire/Foundation series ("The Robots of Dawn" and "Robots and Empire" were great), although you're right that I wasn't totally thrilled with Foundation's Edge / F&E. But the Hari Seldon books (Prelude and Forward) were GREAT, probably his best real novels. Wish he was still around though...
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
I'd like giant fish. Giant whale-like fish. That would be ultra-cool. Of course bacteria would be cool. In fact damn cool, but nothing gets the heart racing like a macroscopic multicellular organism. Even something like a guppie. They'd HAVE to bring one back. If they did, and they could get it to live here, you know people would be rushing to Europa to bring Buffy and Tad Europan Guppies. It could actually be a new gold gold rush and herald in mythical interplanetary travel.
Of course, the movie version shows dancing spaceships better.
Why oh why can we not travel faster than the speed of light? I want my warp speed!!!
Seriously, NASA (and other space agencies around the world facing serious budget restraints) are going to have to do some fancy dancing to keep "us" (in the lower common denomenator type sense) interested in their exploration projects. I notice that it won't be 7 or 8 years before the laser spectrometer can partially confirms this theory (and then probably another 7 or 8 years before the next craft to "study it further" could conceivably arrive).
15 years. That's a long time to people becoming used to psuedo-instant gratification. The MTV generation can't keep focused on more than one thing for more than 10 seconds apparently (at least, that's what I assume based on those nauseating videos I happen see, anyone else feel seasick watching these music videos now?).
Hopefully, a proliferation of stories like this will generate and expand peoples interest in innerspace exploration and travel. NASA's servers (and the other space agencies around the world of course, let's not be USA-centric here) have an incredible amount of cool info. Maybe someday American's will elect representatives who think agencies like NASA are more important than making sure everyone can have their own personal semi-automatic rifle and direct the extra funding and resources accordingly.
Just a couple thoughts, probably offtopic, so moderate accordingly.
--
M
-r
WE already know that the surface of Europa is covered in (frozen)water. We can also be pretty sure that the water covering the moon was liquid at one time in the past. Why is it so hard to believe that it might be liquid now? Sure, it may not be liquid anymore, but, on the other hand, it may be. I suppose we'll just have to wait and find out.
You have a good point about the question of how planets form. Why did Europa get all the water anyway? Or, did the other moons get plenty of water as well, but it has since boiled off into space? Interesting questions.
You've posted only 3 comments on /., and all 3 are either trolls or flamebait. Such dedication is impressive.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
has anyone else been thinking that it could have been timed better? i mean, right now it's getting there in 2007, but what if they had timed it so it left three years later and arrived in 2010? would that be f****n freaky or WHAT? too bad jupiter is a moving target and you don't get many choices as to when you launch the satelite.. oh well -_-
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
you just didn't read it closely enough. here, i'll quote the relevant sections for you:
"The enigmatic, unknown extraterrestial forces which have apparently been cultivating sentient life throughout the galaxy for aeons abruptly reversed their stance on the Europa project yesterday and embraced the Open Source philosophy.
Formerly Europa had been totally propeitary, and the only statement released by the extraterrestrial forces was "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS. EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE." However the extraterrestrials are now planning to release under the GNU public liscence the full genomes of all life that develops on Europa, and are inviting other sentient beings to help in the creation.
There is no word yet as to whether they may be considering open-sourcing the DNA sequences used by life on earth. In the absense of publicly available source, some humans have turned to attempting to reverse-engineer the DNA sequences under the banner "WINE^H^H^H^HThe Human Genome Project".
The extraterrestrial announcement may help to explain the incident last month in which Linus Tourevalds, RMS, and several other experienced programmers were inexplicably turned into radiation-based life forms by a large black monolith which mysteriously appeared at LinuxExpo in what appears to have been some kind of recruitment drive.
[snip]
Since the life on europa is still carbon-based, it is believed that porting of the Linux kernel will be relatively easy. Judging from a strange and slightly cryptic message (apparently from Linus) that mysteriously flashed across all of slashdot.org's monitors shortly after the extraterrestrial announcement as some strange force briefly seized control of all the computers in the building, work is preceeding very well; while right now they are concentrating on a port of GCC, it is possible there may be penguins on Europa as early as next year.
God could not be reached for comment."
-mcc-baka
who is even more tired than you
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Finnaly a place where I can raise my race of mutant whales with monkey tales attached to there left nipples! Damn PETA won't let me get away with any thing on Earth!
Who's the Boss? Tony Danza, of course!
ahh, attack my point purely based on the fact i can't spell, and my grammar is incredibly informal unless it has to be formal. i've yet to see a challenge to my logic that is a. founded in any point that i make, b. not an attack on my religion or c. based in logic what so ever. HOW THE HELL DOES POOR SPELLING MAKE MY POINT INVALID? i would love to get into a good religious debate (i was a debator for 4 years, i love a good debate) email me if you to continue this, but not if you plan on just attacking my spelling as it seems to be the trend here. for supposably intelligent people many of you seem, ignorent (there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity), intolerent, and close minded people. and where the did the flat earth comment come from after i said i tend to belive the scientific literature, including evolution. what is with these personal attacks, why not attack my points?
> Maybe someday American's will elect
> representatives who think agencies like NASA are
> more important than making sure everyone can
> have their own personal semi-automatic rifle and
> direct the extra funding and resources
> accordingly.
The government spends more money trying to make people *NOT* own firearms than they do protecting that fundamental tenet of the Constitution.
Now maybe if the government didn't have to spend millions of dollars looking into the abuses of power in the Executive branch, we could throw a couple tens of millions over at NASA. Not a lot, but every bit would help, eh?
Of course, government agencies tremendously overspend and NASA is no exception. The ballooning cost of the International Space Station is a prime example. Only the recent Deep Space projects have tried to reverse this problem.
Personally, I think life on Europa is kind of a geewhiz kind of thing. If there's life there, great. It doesn't do much for us though. We get the "we're not alone" thing settled or maybe not.
Wouldn't we be better off directing our resources at the crusty sphere we look at every night? You know, the moon that we abandoned twentysome years ago? It seems like the perfect stepping stone to deeper exploration. Of course, the tidal effects on the Earth of repeated lunar gravity assisted launches could be bad. Mars should be our prime target after that. Let's get the terraforming process started so if the environmental naysayers are right we have a place to go.
Hell, let's commercialize space as much as possible. It's the only way you or I are ever going to get the chance to go. Start mining some asteroids and setup a processing plant on the moon or something. Offer tours like you get at the Hoover Dam.
Deep space exploration is pretty cool. I'm a big fan of all the news that comes from it. But beyond the science of it, how does it help me? Not a whole lot, I'm sorry to say. Let's focus on some projects with achievable goals in the relatively near term.
Of course, if everyone voted Libertarian, we'd have a lot more resources to make this happen.
I am not attacking your points because you're such a loser that I just can't resist it!
If you go back to high school and learn how to formulate an argument that doesn't have spelling mistakes, then I might consider attacking your points in an objective manner.
Not all Christians are fundamentalist boneheads whose faith is threatened by scientific observations.
Oops. I did not mean to imply that. I wrongly assumed that the 'Christian Science monitor' was a magazine associated with 'Christian Science', which is a movement set out to bring us back to the 18th century.
So you're saying that simply because nature is so intricate that it all couldn't happen? The fact that there are squillions of stars in the Universe is enough evidence for me to accept that they form naturally.
There's no need to bring an imaginary ethereal being into the discussion to justify that which simpletons have difficulty understanding!
All to often religious people fall back on the same old argument: "God designed it that way" - well I've yet to see any of your gods, and until such time that I do, we can only assume these are natural occurrences.
No one can prove the existence of any god. Stars are there and form naturally until otherwise proven - so deal with it!
See my post to your original argument - I'll just have to overlook your poor spelling/grammar and deal with your original claims.
How can you claim to be involved in an intelligent discussion when a primary-school child could spell better than you?
Haven't you heard of spell checkers?
It's between 36 and 53 light minutes from Earth to Jupiter, depending on the time of year. I'm basing this on my memory of Jupiter's year being 12 Earth years which puts Jupiter at about 5.24 AUs (Earth orbits) from the sun ( y2/y1 = (d2/d1)^1.5). 10 light minutes a about 1.2 AUs; I'm not sure if that will get you from Jupiter to the asteroid belt and probably not Mars, even on a good day (can somebody give me Mars' and the asteroid belt's obital distances or periods?).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Didn't we already hypothesize that there are oceans on Europa? With a frozen crust?
This is good, good, good news.
The discovery of life on mars would be great, but it's possible (nay, probable) that this life would have the same origin as life on Earth.
Europa, however, is way to far away for this to be probable. It's still finitely possible, but that's all.
And, as we all know, life probably needs water. Life as we know it certainly does.
If there is water on Europa, there may be life. If there's life on Europa, as far as I'm concerned it's ubiquitous.
. . .So 98 foot tides would be quite possible.
But what, then, is holding up the ice shell ?? Unless they're claiming that the shell moves, at least for the most part, as a unit, and only excessive stresses would cause fractures, etc...
Still, it'd be nice to put a probe in long-term orbit around Europa....
you'll all have to excuse me, but it's been 7 or 8 years since I read 2010...
remember when the rescue crew (were they russians?) heading for the Discovery ended up on Europa? didn't they discover that Europa's icy surface covered a liquid ocean? and didn't somethign come out of the ocean and eat their spaceship or something? (told you it's been a while.)
sort of interesting that Clarke forshadowed this so accurately, if I'm remembering right. If memory serves me, there's also a big white area with a black dot in the millde on the moon where dave bowman found the third monolith. (I believe I read that in some interview with Clarke or something.)
anyway, all very interesting.
'"It sure would be exciting if we could go into that ocean if the ocean exists," says Dr. Kargel. "Who knows what we would find there? Maybe an organism."'
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS. EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
In the article, it states that the first life requires photosynthesis... which would not be able to penetrate more than 15 meters of the frozen crust.
On Earth, isn't it now believed that the first life was formed from "hot beds" on the ocean floors. Where magma broker through the Earth's crust and warmed the water. Obviously, absolutely no rays from the sun are able to penetrate miles down to the bottom of the ocean either.
How are they implying that this could not happen on Europa?
Since Europa is a satellite of jupiter, think about the tides that must be occuring with a giant of that size nearby. Also, the tides would probably affected by the other moons as well. crazy.
I'm still skeptical though, of the existance of the ocean itself. But its implications on how planets form would be very interesting, in terms of the heavy body and water distribution from the accretion disk that formed jupiter and its moons.
-- Moondog
Sounds like something right out or Arthur C Clarke's 2010 and 2061. Basically he wrote about Europa having all the ingredients for life (specifically plenty of water) except for a nearby heat source (which is why the monolith turned Jupiter into a star). He wrote about some life forming at the bottom of this ocean next to sources of geothermal heat.
Cool.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
At the ending of the first movie, this guy lands on the planet (or moon?) and you see him flashing back and forth in three stages of his life. What is that supposed to be?
Liquid deposits beneath the surface of Europa have been posited for a considerable number of years. Easily since I was in middle school. The Christian Science Monitor is not exactly breaking scientific ground here.
Here is a link to a 1996 conference on this subject.
A similar story is running in Scientific American. You can see the table of contents for this month's issue here.
Points to Remember:
*it may not be water. Long-chain hydrocarbons have also been proposed. It could be from mineral oils to salt water, really.
*the only "new news" here is the theory proposed by these guys from the U. of Arizona that the cracks are consistent with tidal patterns. This is cool, but it is only confirming evidence for what people believed in the first place.
*Europa has strong volcanic activity, similar to its lava-covered sibling Io. This is due to Jupiter's insane gravitational pull. But Europa is colder than Io, because it's further out and has no atmosphere, so it has an icy crust. The idea is that (if it really is H20 ice) the volcanic activity has melted some of the ice. But, again, lots of stuff besides water freezes. All we know is that spectrogr aphically there is some kind of salt there.
I hope it does prove to be water, but let's not get carried away just yet.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
It shouldn't go without mentioning that Arthur C. Clarke imagined liquid water under the ice on Europa in 2010: Odyssey Two.
"Jupiter Has Big Red Spot"
"Mercury Closest Planet to Sun"
"Life Discovered: On Earth!"
Seriously, how new is this "news"? Haven't we known about water on Europa for quite a while now?
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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I remember reading somewhere that there are plans to send a probe of some sort out to Europa and pierce the icy crust to see if there be any beasties beneath.
Good hunting to 'em.
I will be able to net that Mermaid I have always desired!
The article goes into considerable detail about the effects of torsion from Jupiter and the other moons on Europa and how this generates tidal heat that can keep the sea liquid. The icy "shell" seems to rotate faster than the moon itself, with the sea acting as a kind of bearing. The most interesting evidence for me came from analysis of the Galileo probe's telemetry: subtle perturbations in its radio signal as it moves through its orbit suggests various properties of Europa's gravitational field, which in turn reveals the density at various levels, which ultimately is being used to estimate the thickness of the probable Europan sea, etc. All from a little distortion in the telemetry. Not bad.
The article is very good, and worth going by a news stand or library to look over if you get a chance.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
http://www.pufori.org/news/nws0203981.htm
i ndex.html
http://www.scifiweb.com/frames/main.html
http://www.sddt.com/files/librarywire/98/02/02/
...before you go making uninformed sweeping statements like that!
I clicked on this article and then wondered why there was nothing about Linux then I realized..
It's not "Linux Oceans on Europa" rather:
LIQIUD Oceans on Europa.
Time for a new monitor.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Without the sun and moon being in conjunction or opposition, you don't get spring or neap tides, just high and low.
Since Europa is not in a perfectly circular orbit, and since Jupiter has 3 other "tidally significant" moons (i.e. big enough to matter on a macroscopic scale) you could get some killer tides. In fact, with Jupiter, the Sun, and Ganymede, Callisto, and Io all creating separate tidal patterns, you'd have five different high tides and ebb tides each day - day being the same as an orbit, of course, since we're locked - and those tides would all reinforce and cancel eachother out. 96 foot waves would probably require all five tides in sync - but that would happen several times a year, I think.
My head hurts...
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
People seem to forget that Jupiter still emits far more heat than it receives from the sun. Jupiter still retains primordial heat from when it formed and emits enough to maintain slushy water oceans on Europa. Besides the tidal forces continually crack up the ice surface to keep things fluid.
The mission plans to determine the thickness of Europa's Ice and determine the existence of water. There's also a link on that page about the mission being a precursor to "hydrobots", underwater submaries that would melt their way through the Europan ice to explore underneath... Very Cool.
Well, if there is inded water on Europa, now all we need to do is bring it over here and set up a really big vacuum to give us filtered "Europa-Water-In-A-Bottle" and sell it to nations that need water. There ya go. But seriously, if there is indeed water on Europa, we're just one step closer to finding something out in that big nothing they call "Space". G4
I am a Christian Scientist, and as such I have learned tolerance for those with different beliefs, but some of the posts on this topic truely sadden me. You may not agree with our religious beliefs, but there's no need to insult the Christian Science faith. It, to me, shows a huge lack of maturity.
No, you're right, the CSM is affiliated with the famed crank Christian Science movement. Amazingly, however, they keep the newspaper clean of their nonsense, and surprisingly secular. Good news source, actually. Strange but true.
Hey, your logic is of the same quality as your writing! That's so useful!
Anyway, using your logic, I could walk about the Grand Canyon, marvel at the many awe-inspiring vistas presented, and think, "There must be a Designer! The action of water on rock could never have produced this beauty!"
Oh, and it wouldn't matter if the entire U.S. and the rest of the world believed that the Christian God created the Universe; that doesn't make it true.
no, thats not what i'm saying. if you found a watch on a beach would you assume that it came about naturaly. we are more complex than said watch, there was a good article in a magazine called Analog a few years ago that pointed out that the tolerances for even star production are incredibly tight. i've researched this type of thing have you. i find absolutly no contridiction between what the scientific community believes to be the have happened and the teachings of the bible. tehy aren't there, look at the order of creation in genisis, do you think that 6000 years ago people would have had the same order for the creation of the universe and evolution of life as the current theories go? i agree thought truth by democracy is horrible. all i have to say is believe what you like but research first, don't be afraid to learning something new and don't discount ideas just b/c they come from a source that you don't share the same beliefs, evaluater them on a case by case basis, other wise you will end up missing many insightful viewpoints. oh yeah i you misunderstand my logic, you relise Zeno used perfectly sound logic to prove motion doesn't exist, you have to be careful how you apply logic, existince does not mean design, the incredible odds against us being here point that way
...And the article talks about te possibility of life evolving on Europa?! I thoght they believed evolution was a myth.
Well, the ice shell would not always have a source of light, or more importantly, a source of heat energy... While it is facing Jupiter, there is be some elecrtomagnetic intereference with the huge planet that will cause some heat to be released on Europa's surface... And we all know that it is warmer during the day than at night. So, it may be possible that when Europa is facing the sun and is close enough to Jupiter, parts of its surface may heat up enough so that a liquid sea underneath the crust could break through, if even just a little bit. And on a very large moon covered completely with water, 98 feet is just a little bit :)
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Matt Singerman
Matt Singerman
http://matt.vegan.net/
I can't cite anything off of the top of my head, but has anyone else read Clarke's 2069? The Europan ocean features prominently in that story.
Ok, I did a quick search on altavista. Here's what I came up with. I'm sure that you can find more if you're curious.
- Building a Probe for Europa
- Space Probe Finds Evidence of Ocean
- Pictures support theory of water on Europa
In re-reading the article, I see that the announcement is of a theory describing the mechanism which creates the patterns in the ice, not that Europa might have a liquid ocean, as the title of the slashdot post implied.--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
http://www.sciam.com/
Unfortunately, you can't read current articles on-line. Subscribe! It's a great mag.
One of the interesting bits in the article was that the Russian Vostok [2] outpost in Antartica is right on top of an under-the-ice lake, al-la Europa. They are going to field-test the Europa explorer equipment on it -- satellites and robots. Two robots are proposed; a "cryobot: and "hydrobot". The cryobot would look at the ice and melt a hole down into the water. The hydrobot would look at the water.
There's also an article at Nasa about life on Europa.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I could be a bit off on this, but if memory serves, one of Sagan's more recent origin of life on earth theories said that primitive earth was a frozen ball, much like Europa seems to be now, covered with a skin of water ice, and that organic elements may have been introduced my colliding asteroids, or at least the primitive ocean would have benifited from the heat and chemicals of early impacts.
it goes on to say that by keeping the ocean liquid underneath with hydrothermal activity in combination with asteroid impacts, this could have lead to an abiogenic formation of life.
and here we see Europa with an ocean covered by a water ice crust (so it is water underneath, if at all) heated by hydrothermal vent activity, and it has undoubtedly dealt with asteroid impacts...hrmmmm....
According to this article at CNN, Scientists think they have liquid seas on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Not below ice like Europa, but above the surface. They hypothesize that the liquid are hydrocarbons.
This was also released 2 years ago (April 9, 1997)
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
I know it might be hard to push anything resembling facts past that forcefield of bigotry you have up, but I'll try anyway....
"Christian" != "religious fanatic" for all values of "Christian." Judging people based on short, one-word labels is called 'prejudice.' It's ugly. If the name of the group were "Religious Fanatic Scientists," your point would make sense.
And, no, I'm no Christian either. But having an unthinking knee-jerk namecalling reaction to religion makes one just as much a mindless zombie as blindly following religious dogma does.
Pot and kettle, my friend....
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But how come I have a hard time reading anything pertaining to scientific discovery from a Christian Science newsletter?
Call me jaded, but the whole "no doctors" thing makes me very wary of anything Christian Scientists write about.
Even if what you say is true (see other reply deeper in this thread regarding the validity of these claims), deciding the value of art based on the character of the artist is a completely invalid mode of thinking.
Clarke's works are, for the most part, very impressive pieces of futurism, and will continue to be, even if it's discovered that he's a pedophile crack addict Nazi war criminal.
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Life can exist without sunlight. There are some ecosystems in the deep sea, around hydrothermal vents. At the bottom of the food chain there are 'chemolithotrophic' bacteria, that utilise the difference in electrochemical potential between inorganic chemicals emitted by these vents for growth. These ecosystems, that exist completely independent from the sun, include not just these bacteria, but also invertibrates that eat them, including giant mussels and tube worms. If Europa has hydrothermal vents like these at the bottom of it's ocean, it is theoretically possible that an ecosystem evolved that's based on them, far below the icecaps, and shielded from any radiation.
There is simply no way life could be transported from the earth to europa in tektites. Even if microbes somehow survived being shot from the earth, and even if these rocks could reach Europa from earth, the thousands or perhaps millions of years the travel in space would take would surely kill any earth life form.
Not all Christians are fundamentalist boneheads whose faith is threatened by scientific observations.
I know that the Roman Catholic Church has no problem with evolution. A lot of the mellower Protestant denominations don't get ruffled about it.
I don't know how Christian Scientists feel about evolution. I do know their 'zine is highly respected for being impartial on international matters.
Everyone knows there's life on Europa. Those lines on the surface are from ice skating. I haven't seen a picture of it yet that didn't have a Figure-Zorb in it somewhere. I just hope that when they do send a probe they don't accidently have it arrive during the off-season, when everyone's over at South Molten Lead Beach on Venus.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Heat could (and may well) be generated by the tidal flexing of the planet. It seems like there definately WAS water. I just hope there still IS. I think there is. The larger impact craters that are still visible have faded/filled in to a tremendous degree. What would be cool is if we could hurl a big artificial meteorite at its surface and then watch to see if the damage 'heals' itself by filling in from underneath and icing over. That wouldn't be very nice, of course, if there really *is* life in there!
**>>BELCH
If there is a planetary ocean, then the cracks are what are called "leads"; Areas of either open water or thin ice between large ice sheets. These are the places where there would be enough light for some photosynthesis to occur. The question I have is; "What is the radiation environment at or near the surface of Europa's leads?"
Jupiter has a simply huge magnetic field that traps cosmic rays and energetic solar wind particles for very long periods of time. This is bad enough that our space hardware has an difficult time with it, and I have heard the speculation that human beings could never visit the region of Jupiter without taking a lethal dose.
Could life evolve or take root (transported from Earth on tektites) in the leads of Europa given the extant conditions?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Not really to relevant, but 3001 is an excellent book and ties up a lot of the loose ends in the series quite nicely.
I dunno. When they revived Poole, I just started to lose it. And that was very early on. The whole virus thing was kinda strange too.
His books of late have been rather poor (3001 and the Rama series comes to mind). Disappointing, as his earlier works were *excellent*.
Unfortuntely, the same was starting to happen to Asimov before his death (see Foundation's Edge and Foundataion & Earth). They weren't *bad* but definately not up to par with his earlier works.
Or am I confused?
How bout 1 for each planet....or 2 if ya wanna get real wacky.......then have one way way way out between Pluto and that other thing people like to call planet 'x'-windows.
We could use the excuses of 'education' and early warning system for 'meteors' 'rogue aliens' 'more extensive scientific study'.