Slashdot Mirror
Life on the Moons of Jupiter?
bcrafts writes "The ecological conditions in which microbes were found by researchers near the Antarctic underground freshwater Lake Vostok, have sparked more discussion inside of NASA, on a CNN report, other scientific groups,as well as other online sites about possible life on Jupiter's moon, Europa. "
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
How long so you think it would be before we can play a baseball game against their team?
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS/M/Sd?s-:a---->?c++UL+++P++++L++++ E+++W+++N+K-w---M-PSY+t+5?XtvbDI++
They should be pouring money into probes of Jupiter, because at least that planet and it's moon have at least some activity. Mars for all it's worth seems to be a dead planet. I'm not saying we'll find intelligent life in our own solar system, but it would be nice to try and find some life on a planet or moon that might be more capable of sustaining life than Mars?
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Scientific American ran this as its cover story in its October 1999 issue. You guys should have picked it up from there, they write better stories than CNN.
but I think it bears repeating, so I'll say it again.
The discovery of life on Europa would more or less confirm the ubiquity of life. If microbes were found on Mars, they could have originated on Earth and moved to Mars (or vice versa), but the chances are low indeed (although admittedly not zero) of Earth and Europan life having a common origin.
Having said that...
The Vostok life forms show only that life can exist in such environments; it says nothing about life forming there. It may well be possible for existing life to adapt to a shitty environment (from our POV), but it would, to my untrained eye, be far more difficult for life to start there.
Life exists on Jupiter's moons because we sent it there. "Clean rooms" do not keep _all_ microorganisms off of our space probes. Of course they could survive the journey there and maybe even start to reproduce.
Ah yes, the fine line between "unravelling the mysteries of the cosmos, affording Man a greater understanding of the origins of life... itself!" and "incompetent bastards who repeatedly slam your tax dollars into distant planets"...
January 17, 1997
Web posted at: 11:00 p.m.EST
btw...
This link (jpg 44K) shows a closer view of the moon Europa orbiting Jupiter.
I'm not impressed. Every spot on this globe has been through dramatic climactic changes over geological time. At more than one point, Lake Vostok was swamplike, teeming with life.
But life surviving inhospitable environments is very different from life evolving in such places. Has anyone a theory that Europa was once warmer, with sufficient sunlight? Or maybe ejecta from Earth impactors has transported life elsewhere?
-- Robert
It has all the water you could possible want! Ever! And its closer, and thus not as cold.
The way I see it, having a base on Europa would be quite similar to having a base on antarctica (I just *know* I spelled that wrong :o) , except its a lot harder to get to. And you need to bring your atmosphere with you. And there isn't as much gravity. And, um... Jupiters gravity could screw you over a little bit (Don't even get me *started* on Io...) And... actually it isn't all that much like having a base on antarctica at all.
But my point remains valid, as soon as I actually remember what it was...
Shawn Poulsen (Fruan)
"On Slashdot, many obvious things are insightful." - Annonymous Coward, 2000/7/9
Sunlight is not a requirement for life, the rich life surrounding underwater volcanoes proves that.
:)
If Europa has seas (of liquid water) and volcanic activity, I would bet my money that it has at least bacteria. But is it warm enough?
"Scientists say Europa's surface may be as warm as 0 degrees F.,"
"Located 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Europa is too cold, measured at -230 degrees Fahrenheit (-145 degrees Celsius), to support life as we know it."
So, in short, we don't have a clue.
This is exactly why "faster, cheaper, better" is a good idea. The failure rate does not change, and they lose less each failure. But of course "faster cheaper better" does not apply to manned spaceflight. (n.b. I'm not flaming you, you probably agree, but I want this message to go out...) cheers...
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
We've known for decades that life can develop in some of the most hostile environments known to man. From the hottest, driest desert, to the deepest depths of the ocean, and even in sulfur-laden and extremely "toxic" areas by undersea lava vents, there is life. And not just the odd creature or two. Every environment on earth (with perhaps the exception of the interior of active volcanos) is TEAMING with life. Fifty years ago, suggesting life existed in some of these places made you a crackpot. Now that we've found life in almost every imaginable environement on earth, why does thinking that equally complex and sophisticated ecosystems have developed in not just a few places in the Universe besides Earth still make you an extremist? I think it's time for the establishment to encourage a little more free-thinking among the scientific research community. There is NO environment on Earth that is truly lifeless. Why would any other planet be much different?
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
Read 2010: Odyssey Two, Chapter 11: Ice and Vacuum.
He describes a very interesting creature uniquely adapted to the harsh cold and explains how it could have evolved there.
Yes, it *is* science fiction, but remember that this is Clarke, who loves throwing facts and theories into the writing. It does make it that much more interesting. Try reading "Ghost off the Grand Banks", where he describes a lot about offshore oil drilling and the Hibernia rig only recently completed near here, the Mandelbrot set including the history of it with some very good explanations, plus a lot of discussion on ways to possibly raise the Titanic.
Asimov is good like that as well. I remember reading his retelling of "The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs" from a chemist's point of view. That one fictional short story made chemistry make so much sense that I really started getting interested in it. Now I have a bit of a chemistry lab here sharing space with electronics and computer equipment.
Oh yeah, highly recommended Asimov non-fiction: "The Relativity of Wrong." It's a collection of essays on a myriad of topics. They're quite witty, too. He exhibits a bit of a Dave Barry-ish style in a couple of places. I learned a lot from that book, and the title essay, "The Relativity of Wrong," is very cool.
Ok, got a little off-topic there, but these books were, I think, some of the most important I have ever read.
Nature has a way of surprising us - after all, who thought that we'd find life forms which could survive in nuclear waste, extremely toxic chemical environments or extremely high temperature environments? It's not much of a stretch to imagine something like existing anaerobic bacteria with greater radiation tolerance...
Europa may be cold on the surface but it
is possible that in the core it's much hotter due
to the gravity of Jupiter "kneeding" the water and
heating it up. On earth we have tides from the
moon's gravity. On Europa the tides could be
strong enough to actually heat up it's core by
friction. The heat caused by that might be enough
to allow life, however primitive, to survive.
does anyone seem concerned about the financial prospects for a mission, given nasa's recent success rate? or would this be the time for a private company to stand up to the task? maybe someone could tell bill gates that europa doesn't have windows yet.
If microbes were found on Mars, they could have originated on Earth and moved to Mars (or vice versa), but the chances are low indeed (although admittedly not zero) of Earth and Europan life having a common origin.
I couldn't help but read that last sentance as "[T]he chances are low indeed of Earth and European life having a common origin."
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
we, on the other hand, decided to change the definition because basing all "life" in the universe on our planet would be self centered. ;-)
we decided to use the idea of entropy. as entropy increases (disorder), heat is given off (general thermodynamics). if one could measure heat changes in a sample of space material from the planet in question and somehow filter out heat given off by exothermic chemical reactions, one could establish a criteria for finding life on other planets that doesn't have to follow the "cell as the basis of life" theory. of course, this was a trivial highschool idea, but it seems to make perfect sense. living things have to utilize environmental energy to survive, and one of the by products of that usage should be heat (or a positive entropy). why couldn't this work? and its less limited than saying all life has to have cells, uses water, and is made of some formation of carbon .... comments?
saugar maripuri
saugar@yahoo.com
"Scientists at the Oversea Laboratory, in Glurgleplic's Crater, have long been researching the question of whether there is life on the third planet from the Sun, Arret. Now, their latest findings suggest that there may indeed be life, but that it's probably very simple. Studies by the group have found that bipedal life can survive such harsh conditions. Radio astronomers have detected modulated radiation from the planet, but discount it's significance. 'There is no intelligent content in any of the radio emissions', one of the scientists said."
"Not all scientists agree, though. 'A very highly amplified EMR scan shows the occasional image of a clearly aquatic life-form, with a white belly, yellow feet and a yellow mouth. This image is usually near the symbols TUX. That some life there is clearly capable of seeing the majesty and excellence of aquatic life of this form is a clear sign of some measure of intelligence."
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think you're wrong. You're saying not even one-celled basic animals are living on another planet? Wrong. I can definetly say that with confidence. Look at the size of the universe, and what we already know! We have already found about 3 or 4 planets that can inhabit life. An example is mars. They found fossilized bacteria there (Bacteria counts as life), there are ice caps (meaning water), and it's atmosphere is made of mainly carbon dioxide! Think before you post these things. Oh yeah, and we'll last more than a few decades. I actually give us a few centuries, if not more. We are a very adaptable species. What about yours?
"As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet" --Al Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
Um, no, they didn't find bacteria on Mars. They found a metorite of Martian origion that contained things that some people thought looked life bacteria. IIRC, the debate over whether it was life or not went on for a while and then people pretty much forgot about it. I don't think the general consensus was that it was life. At best, it is still up in the air.
Sounds like college to me...
Actually, the data I have says Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter. Much like our own moon is to us. So there is no longer any tidal "kneeding" to provide heat on Europa. Of course, there still could be radioactive decay.
-- Robert
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Well as you can imagine, many news sources the next day reported about the newly discovered life on Europa, and the JPL people had to do another quick press conference straightening things out.
Even though it wasn't JPL's fault, scientists do need to be careful with what they say and how they say it. While is was clear to me then that he was only talking about his personal belief, he should have realized that some reporter only 1/2 listening was bound to get it wrong, as so many (practically ALL) reporters do when reporting on matters of science and technology.
And much like that scientist from JPL, I have a suspicion that life exists beneath the ice.
Ignore Alien Orders
Jupiter and its moons are always a fun telescope target. Tonight we had unusually clear and steady skies, which make it easier to clearly see surface details such as the latitudinal cloud bands, the Great Red Spot (or more appropriately for the amateur observer, the Great Pale Spot), and cloud festoons in the temperate belts. Saturn was also magnificent as well, with its moons Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Dione, and Iapetus clearly visible. Mimas and Enceladus were near the visual observation limit, though I managed to briefly glimpse them using averted vision. Uranus and Neptune, both currently in Capricorn, now set too early to allow serious telescopic observation, but when they're available, they're fun to look at too. On good nights, their largest moons (Titania and Triton) are resolvable from my backyard.
I know I'm not the only amateur astronomer that has a planet fetish. I spend about as much time looking at the planets in the solar system as I do looking at everything else combined(galaxies, open/globular clusters, nebulae, supernova remnants, etc.) While looking at Jupiter, Europa, Io, Callisto, and Ganymede tonight, I was reminded of the things that Arthur C. Clarke postulated in 2010: Odyssey Two, and lo and behold, when I check Slashdot, there's an article about possible life on Europa along with comments that reference Clarke's work.
Anyway, to get this more on-topic, I've always wondered what sort of experiments could be performed to test for life on Europa. The type of life that is postulated by current theories would reside far below the icy surface of the moon, near the theoretical surface vents fueled by the tidal kneading of Europa's parent and neighbors. I haven't read up a whole lot on the details of the future Europa missions, but it would be interesting to find out exactly what sort of scientific experiments are being planned.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
This is an interesting idea, but it has a few flaws that need to be worked out.
:), but a lot of the captured solar radiation is used to do things like grow the roots, branches, leaves, and seeds. Doing these things are all increases in local entropy. This is energy which will never make it back into the universe.
:) (It's not in their textbooks :)... you needed Steve Wozniak as a teacher :)
:)
Just to clarify that I understand what you're saying: you state (correctly) that life increases the entropy (orderliness) of an open system, and heat can measure this increase in entropy.
First problem: you can't use heat to measure entropy in the way that you say.
What actually happens is that a life-bearing planet will give off *less* heat than a similar planet without life.
When plants capture the sun's rays and use that energy to photosynthesize, they are not *not* bouncing that energy back into space. Eventually, a chunk of that energy is radiated back out (body heat
Give it to highschool teachers not to pick this up
HOWEVER, this does lead to an alternate testing method: what if the planet is radiating *less* energy than expected? We could conclude then, that the rest of the energy is being trapped by life-as-we-know-it, or something other process which uses solar energy to increase entropy (because, what else are you going to do with energy?
This might work (pardon me if this is what you were suggesting), but it won't work for Europa. Why? Two reasons:
First, we already know life is *not* widespread on Europa (more on this below). This means that Europan (heh) life doesn't use very much energy - maybe small enough not to be detected using current technology.
Second, the kind of enery Europan life is beleived to use is volcano (internal) energy rather than solar energy.
We have to look for other methods. One method for checking entropy is rather easier than looking at the amount of heat radiated. It's the method that also tells us that life is not widespread in Europa.
This method is looking at the atmosphere. Most planets have a "chemically balanced" low-entropy atmosphere. Earth does not. Our atmosphere is >20% oxygen - a highly reactive gas. Were it not for trees replenishing the O2 in the atmosphere, the amount of O2 would decline rapidly.
This is not to say that we must look for O2 atmospheres for life as we know it, but rather, just look for any high-entropy chemically unstable atmoshere... this might be easier to detect than looking for heat radiated.
But this can only show us planets that are *teeming* with life. To find a few specks of life on Europa, we'd probably have to wait until we visit it....
Last probe to Mars:
- failure (never sent back results)
- benifit to science (we learned what not to do)
- cost $165 million
Titanic movie:
- success (made Leo and Cameron rich)
- benifit to teenage girls, only
- cost $200 million
And you say we spend too much on space programs?