There Could Be Massive Shards of Ice Sticking Out of Jupiter's Moon Europa (sciencealert.com) 63
According to a report published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Jupiter's Moon Europa may be home to a forest of tall, jagged ice spikes, which may complicate future missions looking for possible alien microbes. ScienceAlert reports: Few moons in the Solar System are as intriguing as Jupiter's moon Europa. A global ocean of salt water almost certainly surrounds the moon - and it holds more water than any ocean on Earth. Above this immense sea, where surface temperatures dip to minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (-184 degrees Celsius), a crust of water ice forms a shell. Astronomers predict that Jupiter, which bombards the moon with intense radiation, causes the entire moon to groan with gravity's tug. Europa's liquid water is a tempting target for future missions looking for possible alien microbes. But before a future lander can search for microscopic ET, the probe might have to contend with a forest of tall, jagged ice spikes. Their research suggests Europa is an icy hedgehog world, covered in ice formations rarely found on Earth. On our planet, ice takes several forms, as varied as needle ice, rime, parking lot slush and more exotic lumps.
Except Europa (Score:3, Funny)
Attempt no landings there.
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you would think that with all the video and images they show of europa, this wouldn't be a "might" or "scientists think". is everything nasa shows bullshit?
Basically all the video and images you see of space, especially stuff like europa are artist impressions. Until they get there how do you think they can know the exact surface conditions. Galileo got within a couple hundred miles or something but that's still pretty far.
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There is quite a lot of astronomy photography of Jupiter and its moons. I's difficult to get good, high precision images. Europe _spins_, with a period of roughly 3.55 Earth days. It's also quite distant, and near a much larger object that also reflects light, namely Jupiter. It could be very interesting to focus the Hubble Space Telescope on it to look for such structures. But how visible would they be from Earth orbit, even with the best optics?
Re:Except Europa (Score:5, Funny)
Don't believe everything Nigel Farage says.
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Sounds like possibly a worthy target for the Magellan array being built in Chile. Ten times the resolution of Hubble. ... Assuming that it works of course.
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There is quite a lot of astronomy photography of Jupiter and its moons. I's difficult to get good, high precision images. Europe _spins_, with a period of roughly 3.55 Earth days. It's also quite distant, and near a much larger object that also reflects light, namely Jupiter. It could be very interesting to focus the Hubble Space Telescope on it to look for such structures. But how visible would they be from Earth orbit, even with the best optics?
This [gizmodo.com] is what Europa looks like in HST. That is, the top two images. The 3 images in the next row are Galileo images of Europa overlaid on a background captured by HST. You have to realize that all those awesome images of outer solar system bodies that we are all accustomed to, do not come from HST, they come from space probes, HST is several orders of magnitude worse.
Re:Except Europa (Score:5, Informative)
you would think that with all the video and images they show of europa, this wouldn't be a "might" or "scientists think". is everything nasa shows bullshit?
No, just it's worth to read descriptions under the images, they say if it's an artist impression or an actual photo.
For now humankind landed on (except Earth): Moon, Venus, Mars, asteroid Ryugu, asteroid Itokawa, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and Saturn moon Titan, there were a few impactors, which I did not count, so any other pictures are taken from orbit sometimes just by flying by with a great speed, which makes any detail surface features not visible.
So any images of exoplanets, black holes or any surface except the mentioned above are artists impressions. There is a project though to take an image of a black hole's event horizon [eventhoriz...escope.org].
Images of black hole (Score:2)
So any images of exoplanets, black holes or any surface except the mentioned above are artists impressions.
Well, technically, due to how physics work, it will never be possible to make an image of a black hole. There's no such thing existing.
What you could take pictures of is the gavitational lensing (Einstein ring) [wikipedia.org] caused by the presence of a black hole (well, that peculiar photo is a super-massive black hole AND all the surrounding galaxy at the core of which said hole sits, causing the photograph-able mirage together. But you got the idea).
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So any images of exoplanets, black holes or any surface except the mentioned above are artists impressions.
Well, technically, due to how physics work, it will never be possible to make an image ...
Of course, yet there are "images" online, hence mentioned.
Re: Whatever (Score:1)
Always had it. We have been coming out of the last ice age since before recorded history. Please stop being an ignorant fuck who learns everything from TV and read a real book from real historians or scientists. Hint: if they have given press quotes, showed up on tv, signed some UN document or taken part in some other partisan crap they are activists with an axe to grind, not academics.
Real science follows the scientific method. Faux climate science does not and can not adhere to the SM.
But you keep on
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And mankind is an ice age species. Let's not speed it up.
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Lol, omg, even if all the crap the Marxists ...
Does this contempt and calling names suppose to make your arguments stronger or is it just filling in the lack of substance?
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It is of no concern to anyone. What I'm concerned about is that soon there'll be no outdoor ice anywhere on Earth.
Chicken Little called. He wants his OMFG! THE SKY IS FALLING (AGAIN! AND AGAIN!!!) meme back.
And that's exactly why no one takes the fucking alarmists seriously any more.
They've been "Chicken Littles" for the past 30 fucking years. Literally.
The ever-receding "deadlines": [wattsupwiththat.com]
1982, 20 years: "Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, that the “world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act
Re: Whatever (Score:2)
LOL .. almost best headline ever ... (Score:2, Funny)
Why oh why couldn't it be "Massive Shards of Ice Sticking Out of Uranus". :-P
Re:LOL .. almost best headline ever ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, dear. You've reminded me of the Robert A. Heinlien story, "Gentlemen, Be Seated". Our heroes plugged a hole in the wall of the airlock by sitting on it. They nearly died of blood loss and hypothermia, but managed to survive.
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Why oh why couldn't it be "Massive Shards of Ice Sticking Out of Uranus". :-P
I'm not fooled... I don't think that is Ice sticking out of Uranus.
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almost as delicious as the headline "New Tron Star Not Dense" I slow clapped that one.
So basically.. (Score:1)
Deathmatch (Score:3)
And I have my new deathmatch name.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
From TFA: On Earth, the sublimation of massive ice deposits at equatorial latitudes under cold and dry conditions in the absence of any liquid melt leads to the formation of spiked and bladed textures eroded into the surface of the ice.
That sounds like something that's going on today, but AFAIK, the last time the Earth's equatorial latitudes were the sites of "massive ice deposits" was about 700 million years ago. [nationalgeographic.com]
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How did you manage to simultaneously read the article and totally miss the picture of penitentes forming in Chile and all of the paragraphs indicating that, yes, they do form on present-day Earth on the highest peaks of the Andes?
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Alpine glaciers near the equator, like those in the Andes Mountains of South America (as mentioned by the article).
We were told about this... (Score:3)
Give it back! (Score:1)
Icy Hedgehog? (Score:1)
So (Score:2)
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"The first vessel to discover America was from Europe"
Wouldn't it likely be form Asia since there was that land bridge 20000 years ago. I'd presume someone in that group used a vessel of some sort.
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The article very specifically states that only equatorial conditions would allow large shards, leaving the rest of the moon free of them.
Define 'massive' (Score:3)
'Massive' is a subjective description. 1 meter, 100 meters, 1 kilometer?