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Don't get your hopes up. NASA has a long history of pre-teasing these announcements, and then it turns out to be some announcement that while marginally interes
by avar 10y ago
Don't get your hopes up. NASA has a long history of pre-teasing these announcements, and then it turns out to be some announcement that while marginally interesting scientifically, is really no big deal as a news story.
E.g. last year they pre-announced that they were going to make some big announcement about Mars, and everyone was thinking "evidence of life?". And it turned out to be that they'd just found evidence for brine flowing on the surface in some cases[1].
While that was certainly interesting in itself if you follow what's going on on Mars, it was just an incremental addition to the knowledge we already had about water on Mars.
My prediction is that this Europa announcement is going to be something similarly mundane.
1. http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-tha...
- MarkPNeyer 10y agoalways relevant: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-11-30 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-11-30
- otto_ortega 10y agoI think deep down, we all know it is going to unwrap that way, but still want to hope it's something beyond that.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chriskanan 10y agoYes, I agree that this announcement seemed over hyped by the media, like just about every NASA pre-tease announcement. The announcement about Europa today is this: Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesting the icy moon erupts with high altitude water vapor plumes. Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-hubble-spots-possible-water-plumes-erupting-on-jupiters-moon-europa http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-hubble-spots-possib...