New Study On Moons of Uranus Raises Chance of Life 37
A new analysis of data from NASA's Voyager 2 mission reveals that the planet Uranus and its five largest moons might harbor subsurface oceans and potential conditions for life. The BBC reports: Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago. But a new analysis shows that Voyager's visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like. [...] So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London. "These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!".
It has been nearly 40 years since Voyager 2 last flew past the icy world and its moons. Nasa has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, to go back for a closer look in 10 years' time. According to Nasa's Dr Jamie Jasinski, whose idea it was to re-examine the Voyager 2 data, the mission will need to take his results into account when designing its instruments and planning the scientific survey. "Some of the instruments for the future spacecraft are very much being designed with ideas from what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew past the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event. So we need to rethink how exactly we are going to design the instruments on the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries." Nasa's Uranus probe is expected to arrive by 2045, which is when scientists hope to find out whether these far-flung icy moons, once thought of as being dead worlds, might have the possibility of being home to life. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
It has been nearly 40 years since Voyager 2 last flew past the icy world and its moons. Nasa has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, to go back for a closer look in 10 years' time. According to Nasa's Dr Jamie Jasinski, whose idea it was to re-examine the Voyager 2 data, the mission will need to take his results into account when designing its instruments and planning the scientific survey. "Some of the instruments for the future spacecraft are very much being designed with ideas from what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew past the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event. So we need to rethink how exactly we are going to design the instruments on the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries." Nasa's Uranus probe is expected to arrive by 2045, which is when scientists hope to find out whether these far-flung icy moons, once thought of as being dead worlds, might have the possibility of being home to life. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
It must be said (Score:3)
I always knew there could be Klingons on Uranus.
Re:It must be said (Score:4, Funny)
I can't tell you how mad I am at Bode for not knowing his Roman mythology correctly (the planet should have been named Caelus).
That said, a lot of the alternative names people were pushing for at the time were even more absurd, including, among others, Georgium Sidus ("(King) George's Star"), Neptune George III, and Neptune Great Britain. :P
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The Romans would have pronounced this something like "or rune nos"
Re:It must be said (Score:4, Informative)
No, the Romans would have pronounced it "Caelus" (KIE-loose, if I remember my Latin right), because that was his name in Latin.
Ouranos was the *Greek* god of the sky. All the other planets were named after Roman Gods, so Bode just "romanified" Ouranos to Uranus and just assumed that was the name of the Roman god of the sky. It's not. The Roman god of the sky was Caelus [wikipedia.org]. The planet should have been called Caelus. Bode screwed up.
Latin Pronunciation Inferred not Known (Score:2)
No, the Romans would have pronounced it "Caelus"
We don't actually know that since we can only infer Roman latin pronunciation from poems etc. So the best you can say is that they _probably_ pronounced it that way but we do not know for sure.
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Unless they're British, then many says "You-Rhine". Weirdos, don't know why they screwed up the American language like that...
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And apparently they are, appropriately, mooning us.
Halley's comet (Score:2)
Why aren't we planning to put a rover on Halley's Comet .. before it starts gassing up.
Yes, I know this is off topic .. but we need to start pushing for that now. So the probe can be launched in time to meet up with it a few decades before the thing gets surrounded with dust and fog.
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Why aren't we planning to put a rover on Halley's Comet .. before it starts gassing up.
I can think of lots of reasons such as: what will we learn from it that we cannot learn from other comets that may be much easier to reach? How are you going to make the rover drive over the surface given that the acceleration due to gravity only 2 mm/s^2? Indeed, the escape velocity is only 2m/s so one mistake or bad bounce and the rover won't be coming back down ever!
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The rover issue is a solved problem. The Japanese explored asteroid Ryugu, which is smaller than Halley, with a "rover". It used cold gas thrusters to hop around the surface. There have been numerous studies on how to do wheeled rovers on small asteroids or moons. As for "why not any other comet?" ... first, the ESA already landed on and orbited a different one about a decade ago. Here's a view of its surface (looks a bit crazy but it has dust and cosmic rays with stars in the background): btw https://uploa [wikimedia.org]
Teeming with fish? (Score:2)
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To be fair, "fish" is an ill-defined category even on Earth [researchgate.net]. A lungfish is more closely related to you than it is to a coelacanth. A coelacanth is more closely related to you than it is to a tuna. A tuna is more closely related to you than it is to a shark. A shark is more closely related to you than it is to a lamprey.
It's such a mess, you might as well throw in some non-LAWKI while you're at it...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"Fish" is a vague term. Sort of like if it's in the water it's "fish", if it's on land it's "animal". Good luck convincing any of them that a whale isn't a fish (unless it's beached of course).
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The Higgs (Score:2)
Is this what passes for science for the masses today?
Hardly. Ever since 2012 science for the masses has been the Higgs boson.
Enough Energy? (Score:3)
Re:Enough Energy? (Score:5, Informative)
Heat for outer solar system bodies is commonly tidal heating, although solar heat can have surprisingly still-significant effects (resculpting the surface, creating tholins, etc), larger bodies can have some minor radiothermal heating or heat from ongoing gravitational relaxation, there can be fossil heat, and heat can be deposited by (geologically-recent) major impacts.
There may not be tons of heat, but having an outer ice shell whose thickness is measured in dozens of kilometers does an awful lot to insulate you ;)
BTW, the Uranian moon I really want to see more of is Miranda [forbes.com]. The thing doesn't even look real; it looks like a texture mapping glitch.
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Why are you talking about "oceans at 90K"? There are no conditions under which water is liquid at 90K.
This is normal liquid water.
We don't have much data about these oceans, but water phase diagrams limits the lower bounds to not that far off of 0 degrees regardless of the pressure (though the upper bounds can be hundreds of degrees at high pressures). The closest hint we have to anything more definitive than we can get from phase diagrams is some weak evidence that it's at least 88C in at least some part [npr.org]
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We do not know the composition of these oceans, and they probably vary significantly from moon to moon. As mentioned, there's some evidence that at least part of Enceladus's ocean is 88C or higher. That's not compatible with methane hydrates. There's some evidence that Enceladus subsurface water is alkaline. There's probably very different environments in the different subsurface oceans, depending on their particular combinations of pressure, temperature, level contact with rock, what rocks and what ice
Life needs an energy gradient (Score:2)
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I'm not sure why you presume that the contact between subsurface oceans and the sources of internal heat is perfectly uniform, unlike on Earth.
Meanwhile... (Score:3)
A recent poll rules out the chance of intelligent life on Earth
Don't want to be a hater but... (Score:1)
Blows my mind (Score:2)
1) Even ~40 years later, we are still getting new findings from the Voyager dataset.
2) The Voyager dataset is still the best data that we have for most things in the Uranus system. There's recent work [jhuapl.edu] folks have done using JWST observations of Miranda and Ariel, for instance. But even to JWST, these moons are little more than a few pixels.
All of which makes the proposal for a flag [space.com]
If found, most likely origin is Earth (Score:2)
While this study says that the likelihood is "increased," that new increased likelihood is still far smaller than the likelihood of rocks from Earth finding their way to these moons. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/... [harvard.edu] These rocks could easily harbor life that, if it survives the trip, could establish itself on other bodies in our solar system.
why? (Score:2)