Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Space

Io Has Geysers, Lakes And Snow 126

Posted by timothy from the neither-yosemite-nor-endor dept.
An article this week in the journal Science , as reported in this CNN story, reveals that in addition to volcanos, Io is also home to vast mountain ranges, lakes of lava and sulfuric geysers up to 50 miles high. Photographs and thermal measurements from the keep-on-chuggin' Galileo enabled the discoveries. See the NASA press release for slightly more detail, as well as for newly released images (May 18th) from Galileo. (You can read the full Science article here, but it requires either a subscription or a fee.)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Io Has Geysers, Lakes And Snow More

Io Has Geysers, Lakes And Snow

Comments Filter:
  • Acutally they wouldn't send a probe there. One spacecraft was going to crash land there but they altered its course. They did this so that it wouldn't infect the pristine moon. It wouldn't be worth desturbing the delicate balance of life that could possibly live there.
  • Just don't take any of the pins out of it, whatever you do...
  • And hey, Sir Clarke has written about it happening, which as far as I'm concerned, increases the chances by at least 25% right there. :)

    Don't confuse Io with Europa. AFAIK Clarke wrote about life on Europa.

  • I call Ganymede!

  • The amount spent studying space is small in comparison to that wasted on activities like professional wrestling.

    The point of studying it is because it's there to study, and because planetary behavior is important for our understanding of the universe. If I recall correctly, the land tides on Io are something like 300 ft every day, which is why it's so active.

    --
  • Perhaps it's because it's the weekend and the kiddies are out, but already 1/2 the comments in this story or so are jokes about the IO state abbreviation and the state of Iowa, rednecks in Iowa, etc.

    Is no one interested in Io the moon of Jupiter?
    Is no one interested in the scientific implications?
    Is there anyone out there with an intelligent comments to make?


    --
  • While cool as hell, any practical value in this knowedge?

    Ah, my friend, AC, sometimes it is good to learn things beyond one's ability to experience. Not for profit or gain but simply to know. Objective knowledge of our vast universe helps keep ourselves and self-interests in perspective.

    Not that you really cared for a philosophical dialouge on your rant, but, I digress...

  • Don't confuse Io with Europa. AFAIK Clarke wrote about life on Europa.

    Oops, you're right. Got confused there (like that's unusual...) Well, as long as at least one moon of Jupiter has life, I'll be happy. :)
  • I don't think you understand. Arthur C. Clark predicted almost every recent discovery made by the Galileo probe. In fact, in the prologue of 2061 (written before Galileo was even launched), Clarke states that he nearly waited for the Galileo probe to reach Jupiter before writing the book. The Challenger disaster pushed back the launch, and Clarke went ahead with the book. Nearly everything he said has since been proven including ice on Europa, volcanoes and sulfur vents on Io, and the Jupiter-Io Flux. One of the most bizzare predictions is that a huge diamond exists at the core of Jupiter (I believe this was in 2010). The Jupiter-Io Flux seemed absurdly unlikely too...
  • "In short, Io is tightly linked to the giant planet by what amounts to the largest electric circuit in the solar system."
    as well as:
    A flux tube between the planet and moons carries an electric current of
    five million amperes.
    ZORCH! make extra sure you only touch the flux tube with one hand at a time :)
  • On Io geologic processes that take thousands and millions of years on Earth happen in a month or year's time. It's like watching a fast motion movie on geology. Thats a good thing if you live somewhere like Japan or California with alot of fault activity or Hawai'i with its volcanos.
  • So, this is a troll, but earlier messages about poison gas fumes and Cedar Rapids, IO ports and Voodoo 3, geysers and Yellowstone were FUNNY?

    I would moderate you up, technos, if only in the interest of consistency.

  • are you sure youre not thinking of neptune and uranus? it may rain diamonds on those planets but the center of jupiter is thought to be made of liquid metal hydrogen. there may or may not be a rocky core after that in the direct center. but its not diamond, if you look at a phase diagram for carbon the center of jupiter is too hot for diamond to exist.

    When Clarke blew up Jupiter in 2010 (I think that was the right one...) he made the center of Jupiter a diamond (and then his characters find out and discover a small mountain made of the stuff that smacked down on one of the moons). The post I was responding to was speculating on which of Clarke's preditions would come true next.

    And IIRC, the upper atomosphere is supposed to be at least partly carbon: maybe after time it condensed in the core (or maybe around the hydrogen)? I don't know crap about physics or astronomy (and I've heard the metal hydrogen theory before), so you're probably right. I was just being facetious. :)
  • As always I present my random thoughts. First, is it pronounced Eye Oh, or Ee Oh? Sort of like the problems in pronouncing Linux.

    I had the chance to see some of the pics from Io from Voyager very shortly after they were obtained. No WWW back then so transmission of this info was more difficult, Nonetheless, when we saw the pics we all said, Holy Fsck. Time to reboot the disk storage in ones' head.

    Life on Io (or Europa)? Maybe. Why? Because it is now recognized that life can occur in "exotic" environments. This realization is based on studying harsh environment life on this planet. I'm biased on this subject, but why not spend more money to understand this on Mother Earth?

    About seven years ago, seismic activity on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Washington state was monitored by the US Navy's SOSUS system of underwater hydrophones designed to track submarines. Scientists quickly went out to sea to monitor this event. What they discovered was a massive amount of life (bacteria) in this area. Where this this sh*t come from? The conclusion was that it was already in place in the rocks below, and that the seismic activity/eruption released these critters.

    The underwater hydrothermal vents have been studied and have revealed exotic life. Photosynthesis? We don't need no photosynthesis.

    I like NASA. But, let us not forget that we need to study stuff on this planet. I'm waiting for when NASA says that they can get a better understanding of Earth's global climate change by studying other planets. BTW, my last comment is troll bait.

  • Yeah you're right, I think that the top on the Washington memorial in DC was made from aluminum because at the time it was even more expensive than gold and therefore more "precious".
  • IIRC, Volcanos spew Chlorene, whereas chloroflorcarbons, CFCs, can only be man made. The two have diffrent effects on the ozone layer. I personaly don't know if I buy into the whole CFCs cause Ozone holes thing, though. but who knows...
  • IO actually has many definitions:

    1) Jupiter's 4th moon. That's what were talking about here.

    2) US postal code for the state of Iowa.

    3) In computer science, an acronym for Input/Output. (Often written I/O or I2O for 'intelligent' I/O). It refers to any kind data that is transferred (as opposed to stored in memory... most of the time)

    4) Iodine Monoxide. A poisonous gas. Used in the first world war by the nazis. Neil Stephenson, a famous author and veteran of that war suffered some lifelong ill effects from it.

    5) A rather large, shelled, Marsupial who's habitat is a small island in the Indian Ocean. Pirates used to use them for food, since once they were turned on their backs they couldn't get back up. They would have rooms full of them, all turned on there backs, waiting to be eaten in the ships back in the. There aren't very many Ios left today.

    6) Io Portallieni, A famous Renaissance Italian Author from 1750s. A lot of our common legends/stories are based on his ideas. Hansle and Grettle(sp?), Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Star Wars. All were his ideas originally.

    welp, that's all I can think of...
  • Clarke was just following accepted theories on the make-up of planets, he's not some visionary. Look at his 'in the year 2000' lists.

  • Ah yes, to live in the humorless world you propose. Will there be nickel suicide booths too?
  • Oceans, though, aren't a requirement of life. There are many deep core humanly poisonous gas loving organisms that live here on earth. If we can find it here, perhaps we can elsewhere.
  • Cryogenically preserving people will probably never happen, given the cellular damage caused by the process. Of course I can't prove this, so don't take what I say as an absolute, but rather just a gut feeling.

    Of the animals that naturally enter a state of cryogenic stasis, they're usually very simple organisms that spend a good portion of their time dehydrating their body before being frozen.

    Doesn't exactly sound like a fun process to go through.

    It would seem to repair the cellular damage caused by cryogenic stasis, we'd already be well on our way to being able to preserve the state of our cells indefinitely, without having to be frozen.
    And this is no small feet, eh?
  • Natural diamonds are expensive because of the De Beers monopoly.

    Producing diamonds, which has been done for ages, would be cheaper than extracting them from Jupiter's gravity well. So finding a "diamond mountain" on Jupiter would be about as useful as that giant piece of copper ore they found years ago in the U.S. Since it would be so expensive to mine it where it is, it just sits there.
  • Io was discovered (and named?) by Galileo. I'm not sure if it was named after her, but Io was one of Zeus's mistresses. I believe he turned her into a cow to hide her from Hera, or some such. It's been a few years since I've read much mythology, so I may have her mistaken for another myth.

  • Well I know that Canadian cans aren't made of steel. If nothing else, they'd get rusty when they're left exposed to the elements in the back of my truck for a couple three months...
  • As usual, Clarke predicts, NASA confirms.

    yeah, too bad they couldn't confirm common space flight, touristable space stations, and moonbases :-(

    And I don't think we found that monolith either! ;-)

  • Frogs and turtles are as complex as humans yet several species of each are frozen during the winter time as lakes and riverbeds freeze over. Oh well, I suppose by complexity you mean bigger animals.
  • Producing diamonds, which has been done for ages, would be cheaper than extracting them from Jupiter's gravity well. So finding a "diamond mountain" on Jupiter would be about as useful as that giant piece of copper ore they found years ago in the U.S.

    In the story, they found the mountain on one of the moons after Jupiter was destroyed. It blew up, and a piece of the core hit into one of the moons - other pieces were still orbiting around the new sun that was Jupiter. So probably the easiest method would be to attach some engines to one of the orbiting pieces and send it towards Earth. It might take a few years to get there, but it would be relatively cheap to do, because (in the story) we already had settlements on the Moon, Mars, Phobos and Deimos, and were starting to explore the moons of Jupiter. So whenever we send some people out there, we give them a big engine and have them attach it to a large chunk of diamond (ok, it's not quite that simple but you know what I mean).
  • Yeah, nothings gonna live IN the lava itself obviously. It doesn't on earth either, and we do pretty well.

    The article states that temperatures go down to -160, so there is every temperatur in between available. Sounds great for life, if perhaps not for building cities.
  • So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

    Scientific American, February 2000, The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons [sciam.com] page 43, 44, 46-47.

    "In short, Io is tightly linked to the giant planet by what amounts to the largest electric circuit in the solar system."

    The text of the article is available is available [sciam.com] online, including a diagram [sciam.com] of the Io flux tube and plasma torus.

  • The 'money put into this' has been 'yielding results' for decades.

    --
  • This image compares temperatures at the volcano Loki, the most powerful volcano on Io... Wow, looks like Loki got a Volcano named after it... or was Loki named after the Volcano?..or its it all just an odd coincidence?
    Anyone Know?
  • From the Science article:
    The formation and destruction of landforms such as mountains and calderas are also much more rapid on Io than on other planets, so Io is a unique laboratory to study processes normally inferred from the incomplete geologic record.
    Mountains come and go on this planet like technology fads. This looks like a very rewarding place to study!

    I'd say you can forget aboult life on IO with that kind of volatility in the geology.

    "Even if you are on the right track, you'll
    get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers

  • i suppose ther is still a miniscule possibility of life but shouldn't the temperature gradient, where it would have to reside, between the roasting lava feilds and the rest of the cryogenic surface be constantly moving though? as the lava cools it approaches the frozen temperature of the rest of the planet and when a volcano erupts the frozen surface is immediately plunged into a blast furnace of heat. if there is life on the moon it will have to be *very motile, and pretty crafty i would think too.

  • Another Cool Tidbit From Science (Score:3)

    by hbo ( 62590 ) on Saturday May 20, 2000 @05:32PM (#1058640) Homepage
    From Science:
    Io flybys occurred on 11 October 1999 (I24), 26 November 1999 (I25), and 22 February 2000 (I27). Both I24 and I25 suffered from spacecraft or instrument anomalies that eliminated or degraded some observations, but more than 100 useful images with resolutions from ~10 to 500 m/pixel were returned. I27 was a fully successful encounter, but much of the data have not yet been returned or analyzed.
    So the best science data may be yet to come!

    "Even if you are on the right track, you'll
    get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers

  • They were going to crash Galileo (the same probe that took those Io pics) somewhere away from Europa, not Io. Europa supposedly has the subsurface water ocean. There will be a separate mission especially to Europa, I think, that will drill the surface. They didn't want any stuff from Galileo to contaminate Europa. It is a long shot anyway because Galileo has been exposed to so much radiation that it is unlikely there are any live bacteria on it, but NASA wanted to be safe.
  • Am I wrong, or is this going to be enough to send a probe?

    Actually they wouldn't send a probe there. One spacecraft was going to crash land there but they altered its course. They did this so that it wouldn't infect the pristine moon. It wouldn't be worth desturbing the delicate balance of life that could possibly live there.
  • Infect Io? Dude, are you a fucking moron. Think Europa which is a few thousand miles out from there and you'll be closer to the truth.
  • Or start a nice sized war to wipe the slate for a few generations.
  • Actually the theory of relativity has the solution to long term interstellar travel. The theory goes that time slows down as the speed you are traveling at increases. As you approach the speed of light time almost comes to a standstill.

    This means that a flight to alpha century at just under light speed would take a little over 4 years for the people on earth but mere days for the crew of the ship.

    Then there is the question of defining close quarters. If you follow mainstream comics ( Marvel, DC ) and TV SiFi then you know there are many stories of whole civilizations adrift in ships for generations. The key to survival is that these ships must be very very large.

    Add Cryogenics to the mix ( which by the way nobody has got working and I suspect those people already frozen cannot be resurrected.
  • Norse for of mischief. You're thinking Logi, don't feel too bad.
  • From the NASA press release:
    "and mountains that may split and slide
    sideways for hundreds of kilometers, or miles."

    Hmmm... I'm not sure what to think of that. I guess they're just trying to keep their bases covered?
  • Life always finds a way here on Earth, but we're post-eukaryotic. We have all these multicellular organisms acting as vectors for unicellular ones and creating all kinds of chaos in general, which ensures that unicellular organisms will have chance upon chance to spread to any corner of the plant where they can then evolve in happiness.

    It seems that the real trick is to get the unicellulars to arise in the first place, which would be no mean feat in a hell like Io. Once you've got that, then the next trick is to get multicellulars to act as vectors for your unicellulars. Then you've got yourself a big percolating evolving planet. *grin*

  • ok, IANAG (I am not a geologist), but isn't the core of the earth hot simply because the surface is the only heat sink for the planet, and thus cooled faster? As far as I can recall, earth used to be really hot (a notion which has been repeated in some other posts), and it cooled. The core, being insulated, cooled slowly, while the surface hardened and became nice and temperate.

    I don't think that radioactivity has any part to play in the matter. Besides, wouldn't that amount of radioactivity (enough to melt iron) be life-threatening? And I've never heard anything about the radioactive hazards of lava spills. I don't think that your theory holds up.

  • I don't know any PepsiCo insiders, nor am I one, so I may be wrong. However, I think American Pepsi cans are still made from steel. I do have several samples of cans from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper littering my desk, but independent informal testing was inconclusive, even with a few Michelob bottles acting as a control group. Can anyone shed more light on this?
  • The story doesn't really matter, since Jupiter isn't going to "blow up." Jupiter doesn't have enough mass to become a star, and if it were to become one, I find it hard to believe that its satelites wouldn't be enveloped.

    In terms of the books I stand corrected, but I was under the impression we were talking about reality.
  • I thought it was really funny. You must have a lousy sense of humor.

  • IO (Score:4)

    by Not Your Average PHB ( 189341 ) on Saturday May 20, 2000 @04:27PM (#1058653)
    poison gas plumes, erupting molten rock and yellow fields of snow.

    Yup, sounds like Iowa to me. Ever been to Cedar Rapids?

  • The story doesn't really matter, since Jupiter isn't going to "blow up." Jupiter doesn't have enough mass to become a star, and if it were to become one, I find it hard to believe that its satelites wouldn't be enveloped.

    Aliens engineered Jupiter into becoming a star so as to heat the moons and help life evolve on Europa.

    In terms of the books I stand corrected, but I was under the impression we were talking about reality.

    Oh, sorry. The thread originally started because someone was speculating on which of Clarke's predictions would come true next. I figured Jupiter's core being a giant diamond would be an interesting one to be true.
  • Could the sulphur and lava flows possibly provide the energy to sustain life on the planet?

    The more we find out about IO the more I'm sure that some primitive life exists there.

    ---------------
    SitePoint.com [sitepoint.com] - Helping Small Business Grow Online!


    _______________
    SitePoint.com - Resources to Build and Grow Your Site [sitepoint.com]
  • so.. when do I get to move in?
  • IAMANASTRONOMER except for being an IT professional.:)
    The only and the single reason for the Earth inferno is radioactivity of materials hidden inside the planet.
    Look at Mercury, Moon and Mars. There are no geological activities on those planets. The geological processes are manifestations of the movements of molten rock, requiring a big heat engine which in turn requires a relatively large planet that can release enough heat from radioactive rocks over long periods of time to make these processes work. Even Mars, larger than Mercury or the moon, does not have as much geological activity as the Earth or Venus because the heat released by radioactivity is conducted more quickly to the surface from which it rapidly escapes into space. However the closeness of Mercury to the sun raises the planets temperature well above 300C on the day side, the night side temperature falls as low as -150C.

    Temperature of Venus goes above 450C due to a run away green house effect (too much CO2 in the atmosphere, no O2 or O3 (Ozone) at all to protect from ultraviolet radiation and that planet being almost the same size as Earth, has gathered enough radioactive elements during formation to have serious volcanic activity going on only about 500mln years ago.

    It has being proven that should the inferno of our planet came out of just the physical motion of small protoplanets hitting each other during formation, our planet would have lost all that energy through dissipation only after after a few hundreds of millions of years after formation. Plus this is not my theory it is a fact, you can read all about it from astronomy or geology books. I recommend "The Search for Life in the Universe" 2nd ed. by Donald Goldsmith and Tobias Owen. There you'll come across most of what I have said here.
  • Sounds like the ultimate extreme sport resort!

    Pack up the snowboard & BMX, NASA!
  • Nice to see that the money put into this is yielding results




    The Graph: Substance that makes techies tick
  • This place looks like alot of fun!

    When can I book a flight?

    I could train in Haleakala with a 100 pound suit...and strain against the thin air.

    I think Wendy Carlos wrote a tune about this large bolide.

    I want to go!!!

    -Sleen
  • Geysers, mountains, lakes, volcanoes, atmosphere being poisoned... sounds a lot like Yellowstone (sulphur pun intended), doesn't it?
  • hmm? what about pressure? thought of that? course i'm as dumb as a box of hair..
  • Uh ... "buddy" ... How many moons or planets have we found that have life? This isnt StarTrek (tm).


    ...................

    ... paka chubaka

  • It's good to see NASA JPL having some good press and some success after the recent troubles.

    Galileo has been studying Jupiter and its moons for 4-1/2 years. It completed a two-year primary mission in December 1997 and a two-year extended mission in December 1999. Galileo is continuing its studies under yet another extension, the Galileo Millennium Mission. On Sat., May 20, the spacecraft will fly by Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, for the first time since May 7, 1997

  • Am I wrong, or is this going to be enough to send a probe? with that much energy freely available, there has to be the possibility of life, at least at the primitive scale.
  • Reminds me of where my ex-girlfriend used to live. Damn that was a long drive.

  • Re:IO (Score:1)

    by six11 ( 579 )
    of all the shitty towns in iowa, why wouldn't you pick on souix city? CR may smell, and you might not be able to get a decent cup of coffee or pint of beer, but at least they've got a 100 foot aluminum tree. what does soiux city have? a holiday inn and five hundred factories.

  • IO? (Score:1)

    by gee308 ( 167706 )
    Sorry, while we are on the subject of IO, what is IO? And where is it for all those non-space kinda people. Thanks
  • I know there are insturments to test wether or not something is water but exactly how do you do this from space (yes im ignorant).
    Next you'll be telling us Wookies Live on Endor.
  • For a moment I thought it was all the DHMO based kind. HTTP://www.dhmo.org [dhmo.org] but alas this stuff is just as dangerous. Lakes of Lava. sheshee, and I thought Kingston Harbor was bad to swim in.

    It is worth noting however that these items force IO to have a climate that's almost fit for human habitation. Sure there is lots of Volcanic activity but the general temperature has to approach livable limits.

    My own bet however is that when we eventually do find life on another planet it will not be one in our solar system. That however is based on the idea that life is too complex to occur entirely by accident. If it did come about that way, IO and Titan may have some living microbes swimming around.

    I however expect a universe that looks much like the Star Trek/Wars universe. I.e. many civilizations of various levels of advancement that never invaded earth simply because they didn't want to or were busy doing other things.

    Then again maybe we are the decedents of an occupying force from another planet.

  • OK. That was probably his most far-fetched prediction. Absolutely incredible. I wonder how I never heard about this. Thanks.
  • don't be so sure yet. the volcanic vents at the ocean bottom on earth are entirely different than the volcanoes on io. Io throws out more than 100 times as much lava as all of earth's volcanoes put together. it lies smack in the center of an extremely intense(definitly deadly for life like us at least) radiation belt around jupiter. and the lava coming out of io's volcanoes is EXTREMELY hot, much more so than lava on earth which is around 1000 to 1200 degrees c. on io they can be as high as 2000 degrees!! seems like a totally inhospitable hell planet to me.
  • i suppose ther is still a miniscule possibility of life but shouldn't the temperature gradient, where it would have to reside, between the roasting lava feilds and the rest of the cryogenic surface be constantly moving though? as the lava cools it approaches the frozen temperature of the rest of the planet and when a volcano erupts the frozen surface is immediately plunged into a blast furnace of heat.

    IIRC much of the surface of Io is covered in ice, and people are theorizing/hoping that there is a vast sea underneath, heated by the lava. And the radiation might help life evolve: throw lots of sulfur and other minerals into water, add radiation, and heat for several billion years. Sounds like a good recipe for life to me.

    And hey, Sir Clarke has written about it happening, which as far as I'm concerned, increases the chances by at least 25% right there. :)
  • I hae a sneaking suspicion that they were both named after the trickster god of Norse mythology.
  • So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

    No, the center of Jupiter really is a giant diamond. Oh, yeah, and enourmous beasts made of gas exist in Jupiter's upper atomosphere.

    Oh, man, if we found out all that stuff Clarke has written about Jupiter were true, I would freak. :) Of course, he's been right so far... [insert alien/Clarke conspiracy theory here]
  • The press release said something like the atmosphere is 1/billionth the density of that on earth. That could make it a little tough for human habitation.

    Not to mention the intense radiation and tempeture. Also, it's quite a ways from home...

    "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings there." So I guess a settlement on Io would be OK, though I'd settle for the Moon and Mars.
  • Do you know what the Jupiter-Io flux tube is? Clark is a hell of a smart guy but he made his predictions based on OBSERVATIONS through telescopes of the moons. You people act as if no one has any idea that Jupiter had moons before Galileo flew by it. Galileo is just confirming Clark's well thought out predictions. He didn't predict anything terribly absurd or something defying the laws of physics. You dumb sheep.
  • Aluminum is not that cheap even now, because it is still extracted by electrolysis. That is why aluminum plants are usually built next to extra large hydroelectric power plants -- dirt cheap electricity. They still have steel cans in Europe too. I think the reason they make Al cans is more that steel rusts and is also heavier, not that aluminum is cheap (it will probably never be cheaper than steel).
  • ...but I got my hands on Uranus.
  • How the hell is that far fetched? Jupiter has an enormous magnetic field. High energy particles become trapped in said field. Io's orbit is well within the lower (stronger) parts of Jupiter's magnetic field. Clark used physics and some creative thought to make his Jupiter predictions. How the fuck is that incredible?
  • (it will probably never be cheaper than steel).

    I didn't mean it was cheap in comparison to other metals neccessarily; more that it used to be quite valuable (people used to have their good silverware be made of aluminum) and now is significantly less so. Simliarly, diamonds are now quite expensive, but if several large mountains made of diamond was found, the price would probably drop significantly.
  • I thought they fired the guy who couldn't keep metric and imperial units straight...
  • You could have life that spent most of it's time as spores or seeds, and only got active and reproducing when the temperature got just right.

    And that's just one idea I got in a second. Imagine what evolution could come up with after billions of years.

    I think (and correct me somebody if I'm wrong) that here on earth we find that wherever there is the slightest chance for life to exist, it has found some crazy way to make use of an environment.
  • A solar sail is a dumb idea for anything past Saturn. If you really want to make it out of the solar system you'd need something like an Orion system with matter-antimatter reaction over a matter fusion reaction. And even then it would take a while. Crygenically freeze the people. Then send them out of the solar system like pollen.

  • Re:Volcano's sustain life (Score:5)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Saturday May 20, 2000 @08:40PM (#1058685) Homepage Journal
    I am not sure if you guys understand what is the source of IO's energy. Earth is hot in the core due to the radioactive elements found in this planet. It is true that all the internal heat of this planet is created by radioactive materials.

    IO is so hot because it is spinning around huge Jupiter that creates enormous tides on its satellite. The heat is produced by electromagnetic friction and tidal waves in the mantel.

    On Earth there was no life at the times when most of its surface was covered with over active volcanos. On IO, the electromagnetic forces of Jupiter are so strong that it would be extremely difficult for any life supporting molecules to build up simply because the chemical reactions would not take place or would be destroyed by strong electromagnetic forces.

    Of-course we could speculate that the life forms of IO could in principle find it beneficial to use electromagnetic forces of invisible spectrum just like the Earth plants and some bacteria uses visible light to produce chlorophyll. There are no such life forms on Earth but they are not exactly impossible (they could exist somewhere) however, it is easy to predict that such life forms can exist in the right conditions, how would these life forms be created in the first place? IO is highly unstable and does not support predictable conditions for prolong periods of time. I do not believe we'll find any life on IO, we did not find anything on Mars and we know there was water there long time ago. Sad, but Earth will probably stay the only planet in this Solar System that originated life by itself. (We also must check out Callisto, but that is another matter.)
  • Really? It does! Thanks for pointing that out Ig0r:) The Graph: Substance that makes techies tick
    br> http://www.gra.ph/ [www.gra.ph]




    The Graph: Substance that makes techies tick
  • > 2) US postal code for the state of Iowa.

    BZZT, wrong. Thanks for playing. The postal abbreviation for Iowa is IA.

    No wonder non-Americans think Americans are stupid. We can't even get our own geography right.

  • The more we find out about IO the more I'm sure that some primitive life exists there.

    I'd say Europa [nasa.gov] is more likely, as it is the only other body in the solar system known to have liquid oceans [spaceviews.com].

    Or actually, it's possible Callisto [nasa.gov] does, too.

  • While cool as hell, any practical value in this knowedge?

    Beep! Wrong question! Do you want me to go citing people who have said things like that before :-)?

    Like "what is the practical value of electricity?", "what is the practical value of understanding the internal structure of atoms?", "what is the practical value of Quantum Mechanics?", of semi-conductors?

    Well, if that was an important question, you wouldn't have been writing this. Yet, the question is surely asked every time, you get sick of it, I can tell you that... :-) (OK, I'm biased, I'm a cosmology-student).

  • The Working Group for Planetary system nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union [iau.org]. I know the chairman of this working group. He's as professor at the institute where I'm studying.
  • I appreciate the sentiment, but I really was trolling!! The 'Troll' was perfectly appropriate!!
  • I don't have to think about that, the pressure would not cause the melted mantel, pressure of such magnitudes as to cause lava only happen in protostars, we are just not massive enough. Jupiter and Saturn have much more pressure than Earth but this did not cause volcanos, it has being found that high pressure on Jupiter and Saturn caused the hydrogen atoms to change into a different chemical all together - metallic Hydrogen. You can simply calculate the amount of pressure needed to sustain molted mantel and it would be few million times more than what we have right now.

    In fact, the forming stars use the heat generated by pressure to start their thermonuclear reactions. For example our sun needed a temperature of about 7million K in order to start fusing H into 2H deuteron, then into 3He than into 4He, the sun is about million km in diameter and Earth is about 6000km, earth has average density of 5.5 gm / cm^3 this is not even nearly enough to cause increase of heat by 3000K

    Anyway, here is a link for you guys: http://ntserv.fys.ku.dk/mars.htm/WhyMars/chapter_6 .htm [fys.ku.dk]
  • It is worth noting however that these items force IO to have a climate that's almost fit for human habitation.

    The press release said something like the atmosphere is 1/billionth the density of that on earth. That could make it a little tough for human habitation.

  • There is more information related to this article here [spaceref.com] on spaceref.com

  • The C;larke Connection (Score:4)

    by Grant Elliott ( 132633 ) on Saturday May 20, 2000 @04:47PM (#1058700)
    As usual, Clarke predicts, NASA confirms. That European Space Agency division needs to start re-reading all of his books. Let's see here

    Water/ice on Europa - Check

    Volcanos on Io - Check

    Ice in the moon - Check

    Europa most likely location of life - Check

    Sulfur vents on Io - Check

    So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

  • Re:IO? (Score:3)

    by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Saturday May 20, 2000 @04:47PM (#1058703) Homepage
    Io is a moon of Jupiter. Io was also the name of one of Zeus/Jupiter's girlfriends in mythology, so the name makes sense, sort of. It was also the setting of an early 80's mediocre SF movie with Sean Connery. Outland, I think the name was.

  • Ah, now it makes sense. (Score:3)

    by Denor ( 89982 ) <denor@yahoo.com> on Saturday May 20, 2000 @04:48PM (#1058704) Homepage
    I'd always wondered why it was that the people at the computer store told me not to open my computer myself.... I mean, if my IO port is this hazardous, what's my Voodo 3 going to be like?

  • Re:IO? (Score:2)

    by drix ( 4602 )
    It's one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Europa, Ganymede & Callisto. It's very, very far away :)

    --
  • I almost forgot about the diamond thing. Wouldn't that be awesome? Oh, and then we could use the Carbon from the diamond to make a bunch of buckyballs and build a bunch of space elevators...
  • Think about it. When you're running out of space for files on one drive, you get another drive. When you're running out of space for fellas on one planet or moon, you get another planet or moon. Never mind that aliens who look like these guys [preciousmom.com] are armed, dangerous, and ready to strike at any terran invaders, kind of like Indep... erm, I'm boycotting the movies.
  • One common way to identify chemical compositions of extraterrestrial bodies is to use spectrophotometry. Each chemical substance absorbs and reflects certain wavelengths of light, and so we can measure the color spectra of the light reflecting off a planet to figure out what it's made of.

    Chris

  • Actually the theory of relativity has the solution to long term interstellar travel. The theory goes that time slows down as the speed you are traveling at increases. As you approach the speed of light time almost comes to a standstill. This means that a flight to alpha century at just under light speed would take a little over 4 years for the people on earth but mere days for the crew of the ship.

    Yep, but the problem is how you get any significant amount of mass to within a fraction of lightspeed. In fact getting any significant amount of mass to even a 10th of lightspeed requires so much energy that we have no clue how to do it yet.

  • Good comments by Barbarian:

    We're really studying it just b/c it's _there_ to study, and enough people inside of NASA think that Io is just fuckin cool, so let's investigate! :)

    I saw a good Feynman quote recently:

    "Science is like sex. Once in a while something useful pops out, but that's not really why we're doing it."

    :)

    Of course, there are tons of practical benefits too. Do you consider the greenhouse effect to be an important enough problem to study here on Earth? I can tell you now, any theory about the greenhouse effect on Earth, will have to be consistent with the (massive) greenhouse effect on Venus, and the (not-so-massive) greenhouse effect on Mars ...

    Just an example, there are also parallels for Io ...

  • Io is one of the moons of Jupiter, which is one of the other planets in our solar system, Sol. Jupiter is a whopper of a planet, with a lot of moons, but it's made out of gas so landing there is a moot point. If you're in North America, Jupiter is that reddish dot just above the horizon in the east-southeast sky about 11pm EST.
  • Finding life on another planet if it is not in our solar system will be a long time off. Although telescopes can (hubble etc) can maybe see a planet rotating around a sun a long distance away, they cannot get the details needed to identify if there is life there, so if we discover life in another solarsystem, that probally means that we traveled there. Of course, someone else could discover us and somehow let us know, but if you think about it, they would then have been looking for us as long as we would be looking to find them, which would probally be millions of years.

    Traveling to another planet is no trivial task, put that planet light years away, and it is a nearly impossible task. Try to keep a small colony of people alive for 10,000 years while traveling in deep space with nothing to entertain themselves but eachother and an old copy of Quake3.

    s/quake3/yourfavgame/

    People have a hard enough time surviving in a close quartered situation for a few months, try it for your whole life!

    Don't even tell me about the solar sail plan, that's publicity, not a realistic solution for long distance travel. Although it is probally better in the long run than thinking solid fuel (or liquid fuel) would work to go more than to mars or so.

    If we meet another intelligent life form, it'll probally be by accident, not due to anything else.

Slashdot Top Deals

Congratulations! You are the one-millionth user to log into our system. If there's anything special we can do for you, anything at all, don't hesitate to ask!

Close