Europa's Ocean Chemistry Could Be Earth-Like (discovery.com) 73
An anonymous reader writes: Alien life in the universe could be close to home, swimming around Europa's ocean. The idea has been floating around scientific minds for more than a decade: beneath the icy surface of the Jovian moon could slosh a deep, wide ocean with the perfect environment for life to develop. In new research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, NASA scientists studied how the chemical composition of the Europan ocean may have evolved and what chemicals it possibly contains, assuming similar geochemical processes as on Earth are at play. Europa is thought to possess a rocky core fractured with deep cracks that have filled with water. Since the formation of the moon, the core has continued to cool, creating more cracks and exposing more rocks to chemical processes with this water."We're studying an alien ocean using methods developed to understand the movement of energy and nutrients in Earth's own systems," said planetary scientist Steve Vance, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The cycling of oxygen and hydrogen in Europa's ocean will be a major driver for Europa's ocean chemistry and any life there, just it is on Earth."
Substrate does not need to be what we're made of. (Score:5, Interesting)
Life is a process and any substrate that facilitates that process qualifies as "alive." See: Code of the Lifemake [wikipedia.org] for a illustration of that.
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Dammit, "Code of the Lifemaker." Not "Lifemake."
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In short, don't let Von Neumann probes run wild on distant planets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes [wikipedia.org]
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Another illustration from fiction is Dragon's Egg [wikipedia.org].
Really though, what matters for "life" is that whatever the substrate is is able to store information - DNA in our case - and have an ecosystem of related ways to raise and lower energy states in appropriate materials. If both those conditions are met then the process a specific set of material changes with can be called "alive."
Time for a reminder (Score:5, Informative)
"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE."
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Didn't read the book, eh? Nor read countless comments about not having read the book? It shows.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
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You're confusing nerds with ACs.
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the from the director's cut was much better:
"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. FOR THIS IS MY FRONT YARD."
Re:Who the Hell Named That? (Score:5, Informative)
Galileo Galilei named Europa(moon) [wikipedia.org] and if you read wikipedia, it actually makes sense. It's named after Europa, who happened to be a lover of Zeus. Zeus is the Greek God the Romans called Jupiter. Galilei figured it might make sense that the object orbiting Jupiter would be his lover.
It's a bad name today due to the nameclash with the continent. However I'm not so sure that it mattered back then. The prince in Troja was named Paris and they certainly didn't care about city nameclashes. There is an aircraft carrier named George Washington. I haven't heard anybody complaining that they confuse the ship with a human being. There are plenty of intended or unintended nameclashes. We just have to live with those because renaming would be even more confusing.
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Actually, I was aware of a somewhat different story.
Jupiter's moons are sometimes collectively referred to as "Medicean moons". Galileo chose that name to express gratitude towards his patron/sponsor, the Medici family.
`Galileo's dream` by KSR, is a work of fiction that covers that period of his life and the process of discovering the moons, naming them, and so on. You might enjoy this book.
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Uranus did.
Re:And nobody's life is changed (Score:5, Insightful)
Can anyone provide a real answer to the question? I doubt it.
Someone else might find it useful today, tomorrow or 300 years from now. That's the nature of scientific research. How far would have Einstein have gotten without Newton?
Ganymede is a dude, man! (Score:2)
All four Galilean moons are named after Zeus' (Jupiter's) lovers.
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Do you really think everyone who is religious would just declare "Well, there's life on another planet, I guess God doesn't exist"? Of course not. They'll just say that God created that life also but the Bible was detailing the creation of life on Earth. The discovery of alien life won't mean much for them.
For scientists, though, the discovery of alien life would be an enormous discovery. We already know a lot about evolution, biology, etc, but all of our data points come from one source. This would be
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After they said only God could create organic compounds, the first organic compound synthesized was appropriately urea. That did not change their mind.
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" Can anyone provide a real answer to the question? "
For the same reason we maintain research settlements in Antarctica. Finding life in any other place would tell us a lot about the conditions in which any ecosystem and its species can survive. There would be intense study of what any species there might have in common with Earthly life, both to check for any proof of the panspermia hypothesis and to extend the extremophile envelope in which life can exist.
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Can anyone explain how this research impacts anyone in any substantial way
We explore because that's what humans do, those instincts have served us well and helped us climb to the top of the food chain. Also I think you mean "practical" rather than "substantial" because finding ET will have substantial philosophical impacts on billions of people, but probably won't have any immediate practical use..
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He has no choice ultimately. Science has disproven free will. His posting, as yours, was set at the moment of the creation of the universe.
There may not be true free will, but you are not accounting for choice.
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Just remember that wifi that you most likely used to post your comment was created by Astronomers to do obscure star stuff, and it netted CSIRO 450$M of royalties, because it changed people's lives. http://www.theaustralian.com.a... [theaustralian.com.au]
The internet itself was "something that won't change anyone's life"
Over a decade? (Score:3, Informative)
This was hinted at much longer than a decade ago:
"The idea that Europa and other ice-covered bodies in our solar system might possess an ocean of liquid water under a crust of ice was first proposed by John S. Lewis in his paper Satellites of the Outer Planets: Their Physical and Chemical Nature (which appeared in Icarus, vol.15, 1971)." (source: https://www.math.washington.ed... [washington.edu])
And I recall Carl Sagan talking about life on Europa in his Cosmos television show, back in the 80s.
But astrobiology has come a long way since then. I'm halfway through Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" and he goes into detail about the mechanisms which can form complex cellular structures given nothing but alkaline water, hydrocarbons, rock (to supply catalysts), and an energy source.
Re: Over a decade? (Score:5, Funny)
Cut the funds for astrobiology and instead use them to secure our southern border.
Don't worry, Canadians don't spend much money on astrobiology.
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Don't worry, Canadians don't spend much money on astrobiology.
Not that southern border, the other southern boarder. Do you think Mexicans like Central and South Americans taking their jobs?
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Just wait until space aliens from Europa take our jobs.
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Cut the funds for astrobiology and instead use them to secure our southern border.
Cut the funds to secure our southern border to train young people to become skilled tradesmen to rebuild America.
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Astrobiology is important, what if there are a planet full of trumps heading our way
the more we learn, the better we can protect ourselves
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what if there are a planet full of trumps heading our way
We'll build a Dyson Sphere around the Earth, and make THEM pay for it!
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That wouldn't be a very useful construction.
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I know you're trolling, but I have a feeling that we could cut every cent the government pays for astrobiology and still not fund a wall separating us from Mexico. In fact, we could probably cut NASA entirely ($19.6 billion budget for 2016) and that wouldn't be enough for a wall between the US and Mexico. Besides, why cut NASA's budget to build the wall? I thought Trump was going to magically convince Mexico to do it with Jedi mind tricks or something.
Number crunching... (Score:2)
In 2007, the economic losses from crime in the US were $15 billion [nih.gov]. A whopping $179 billion more was spent on police, legal proceedings, prisons, etc. In other words, we lose over $200 billion every year to crime.
Now, the percentage of crimes committed by illegal aliens is surprisingly hard to obtain — federal government is unwilling to keep an officially tally [foxnews.com]
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And how much of that "crime" is related to the cultivation and distribution of plant products ?
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The correlation factor there is drug trafficking not visa status. Facts are that illegal immigrants have a lower rate of crime than the average population. And it is very easy to see why. If you run a red light the worst punishment is a simple fine, while if an illegal immigrant runs a red light the least punishment is deportation.
Illegal immigrants have a crime rate of about half that of native born Americans.
But yeah sure, a wall will stop that. It's not like Mexican culture is already aware of such techn
Walls help (Score:2)
This statement — unsupported by any citations, BTW — is irrelevant to my point. Even if they are less crime-prone on average, they are a source of crime anyway.
We can not get rid of native criminals by deporting them anywhere, but we can deport the folks, who have entered this country illegally (and already have this "original sin" to their name).
It may not stop that entirely, but it wil
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This statement â" unsupported by any citations, BTW
LMGTFY:
From The Economist:
Indeed, Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, has found that "increases in immigration and language diversity over the decade of the 1990s predicted decreases in neighborhood homicide rates in the late '90s and up to 2006." An eight-year study of violence in Chicago led Mr Sampson to conclude that Mexican immigrants are less prone to violence than native-born Americans, whites or black, of comparable age and socio-economic status. In recent years, El Paso, Texas has had the lowest murder rate of any American city with a population of 500,000 or more, despite sitting directly across the Rio Grande from Juarez, a Mexican city plagued with horrific gang violence. Other metropolitan magnets for new arrivals from south of the border, such as San Diego, San Antonio and Phoenix, are similarly pacific. "Cities of concentrated immigration are some of the safest places around," Mr Sampson observes.
These patterns are reflected, as one would expect, in data on incarceration rates. White men born in America are twice as likely to end up in prison as men born abroad, while American-born black men are many times more likely to land in jail than their immigrant counterparts.
Studies cited therein:
https://contexts.org/articles/... [contexts.org]
http://www.urban.org/urban-wir... [urban.org]
http://migrationinformation.or... [migrationinformation.org]
is irrelevant to my point.
Right, because in a debate about crime and immigrants what could crime rates of said immigrants could possibly have to do with it?
Clearly you've run into information that contradicts your point, i.e. that crime rates would go down with less immigrants, and rather than revaluating your prejudice you double down on it. Brilliant.
an Israel-kind of wall stretching for 2000 miles would cost $6.4 bln
I don't know how Slate came up wit
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This carefully mixes legal and illegal immigration together. And there are over twice as many illegal immigrants in the US today, than there were in the 90ies [procon.org]. Oh, and you carefully replaced the number of crimes with the number of incarcerations — illegals don't always go to prison, some times they may get deported instead [procon.org]. Nice try, but fail...
Another funny bit is that neither you nor your source cite figures for Bl
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Another funny bit is that neither you nor your source cite figures for Black men
Except that it does, which you would have seen had you bothered to follow the links.
As for the supposedly unsubstantiated claims they are all a google search away from you. If you are too lazy to search for the facts before bothering to make up an opinion don't expect me to fix that by doing it for you. I'm not your monkey.
BTW I'm not trying to convince you that you are wrong. I've been in the interwebs long enough to know that idiocy is not an electronically curable disease. I participated in this debate f
Debating (Score:1)
No, darling. That's not, how debating works. You make a claim, you substantiate it [wikipedia.org].
Sure, sure. That's one way to surrender. Not the most graceful, but acceptable.
Name-calling is less graceful — try to avoid that, if you do not want to be considered an asshole.
Ignorance of what exactly? Let's recap my statements:
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You are wrong. It's the person making an absurd claim who needs to substantiate it. Say, if we have two competing claims such as "there is a dragon behind that door" and "no there is not". Only one of those two people is really compelled to produce evidence.
So, for example, the Israeli wall is 18ft tall and made of concrete, plus the buried portion. Concrete is a heavy material, so a quick estimate gives about one ton of weight per linear foot of barrier. Assuming that we use local quarries within 100 miles
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Many of the crimes in the US are committed by illegal immigrants — an indisputable fact, even if we can not agree on the exact figures.
False.
Saying its indisputable doesn't make it so.
There are what, 10mil illegal immigrants?
Compared to 320mil legal residents?
And you expect us to believe they commit more crimes than legal residents?
Even as a percentage that just isnt supported...anywhere.
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1742... [huffpost.com]
Oh gee. Looks like they aren't connected after all.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/th... [wsj.com]
Doh, not there either.
http://openborders.info/hispan... [openborders.info]
Damn.
Still more numbers.
so much for "indisputable".
That building a border-wall would greatly reduce their numbers — indisputably proven by Israel's border wall.
Really? Indisputably? Again?
Ok...
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Isn't slowing the drug trade a worthy enough cause in your book than?
It is a worthy enough cause that Mexico wants to help fund a wall. Perhaps you should learn a little about the world before trying to paint everyone as racists.
The fact of the matter is that 100% of illegal immigrants have committed a crime, that crime is called illegal immigration, and is punishable by deportation. Anything that reduces the crime rate of people entering the US is a good thing, as these people apparently have no regard f
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It is a worthy enough cause that Mexico wants to help fund a wall.
Huh? Trump wants Mexico to help, Mexico has said no we won't.
Anything that reduces the crime rate of people entering the US is a good thing,
An obviously false statement. Releasing lions so they feast on illegal immigrants crossing the border would help reduce crime but clearly that would be inhumane and not a good thing.
So, there you go, your infantile argument to justify the wall can be debunked in five seconds of thinking, which seems to be more than the combined total of trump supporters.
Trump's half baked off the cuff proposals are usually selfcontradictory or nonsensical, oft
Bird strike? (Score:1)
I wouldn't know if there is life, but it sure looks like [birdstrike.it] it hit something pretty big [wikimedia.org]... I doubt it's alive now
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The reason Europa looks like that is because Jupiter has enough mass that tidal force from them are constantly squeezing and stretching the moon. Creating those features.
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I think the tidal forces are also the reason the ocean doesn't freeze.
Enough empty Europa stories already! (Score:3)
Why do we keep getting these articles about Europa devoid of any new science? Let me know when someone actually gets some new measurements or, for Christ’s sake, sends a probe to collect samples.
More than a decade? (Score:3)
The idea has been floating around scientific minds for more than a decade
More than a decade? As I recall this was a major plot element of 2010, Odyssey Two, published in 1982. No doubt the idea originated considerably earlier. So, more than three decades at least.
Comment (Score:1)
Ocean chemistry is earth-like-- complete with all the plastic trash and oil and other debris?!