6 ms·

> But the biggest surprise was the amount of water that the theoreticians needed to account for the signals: more than twice the amount of water found in all of

> But the biggest surprise was the amount of water that the theoreticians needed to account for the signals: more than twice the amount of water found in all of Earth’s oceans. Because Europa is only a quarter of Earth’s diameter, the water must be spread around the moon in a global ocean, 25 to 95 miles deep, beneath a 10- to 15-mile-thick ice crust. What is this fixation with water to see if Planet X supports life? Antartica would have been more habitable than Sub-sharan Africa if that was the case. What about the average surface temperature (it's -125C btw)? Gravity? Can it support Atmosphere ie, does it have a magnetic field? How much the round trip time be from Earth? Does it have anything at all that can sustain a farming ecosystem? It's almost as if we just throwing darks in the dark just to find something. Maybe the conclusion is far more banal. There's nothing in the solar system, or maybe even in many light years, that will not be 100x harder to make habitable than least habitable regions of Earth itself.

yieldcrv 4y ago
There is simply an interest in answering the question There are other parties interested in finding life in the least habitable parts of planet earth
LatteLazy 4y ago
If there was an area in the solar system beyond earth with either sub-saharic or Antartic conditions we would look there. This is the next best thing. So we look there...
awb 4y ago
The goal isn’t necessarily to find a second home, but to study extraterrestrial life. Right now we don’t know if alien life exists and if it does how common it is, how similar it is to life on Earth, if it formed spontaneously, etc. It would give us a second data point which we could use to calibrate our understanding of one of the greatest mysteries of our existence.
wruza 4y ago
Afaik, current life ideas are all under-ice. Magnetic fields and surface conditions don’t matter, because Jupiter’s own magnetic field is a source of acute radiation. Callisto receives 7x Earth’s dose, but other surfaces are basically unhabitable.
sph 4y ago
> It's almost as if we just throwing darks in the dark just to find something. Maybe the conclusion is far more banal The only way to know one way or the other is to prove it, which means sending exploratory missions on all the possible candidates for life nearby. Only THEN you can say that there is nothing. It's not a great scientific approach to stop because you're having doubts about your hypothesis. And personally I do not care if it's a futile search or not, I just want to see high resolution pictures if not videos of Europa, its underground water, Titan and its methane lakes, and maybe Venus one day. I bet they would be even more mind blowing than the images we're seeing from Mars.
- bagels 4y ago
  Venus surface images, for anyone who hasn't seen them: https://universemagazine.com/en/the-last-photos-from-the-surface-of-venus-are-forty-years-old/ https://universemagazine.com/en/the-last-photos-from-the-sur...
- basementcat 4y ago
  Titan surface (not radar) images, for anyone who hasn’t seen them: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/Huygens%2BProbe https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/Huygens%2BProbe
throwawaylinux 4y ago
Sub-Saharan Africa gets massive amounts of rainfall, and Antarctica supports a pretty surprising diversity of life. You could well have a valid point but your "background points" are totally wrong, you'd be better just omitting them next time. Moving on from that nitpick, have you actually tried to find out why water is considered a significant indicator for life? And is it really the case that other things such as what you've listed are overlooked?
onlypositive 4y ago
Because we're looking for life of any kind. Water is the main ingredient to that as far as we know.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  [dead]
zuminator 4y ago
Water is a necessary component of life "as we know it," thus it makes sense that if we are going to find other life similar to life "as we know it," we're going to be inclined to check on places with water. That seems the opposite of throwing darts in the dark to me. A better metaphor is searching under the lamppost for our keys. We're inclined to search watery planets first because they seem like more straightforward candidates. Farming and roundtrip time isn't immediately that important since, at least in the short term, there's no goal of terraforming or mining these moons. It's about trying to see if we can find signs of existing life, and to see if that will teach us something about life in general in the universe, or at least in our corner of it. For example, if we find something similar to DNA on Europa, that would be a point in favor of the panspermia hypothesis, or perhaps indicate that Earth's own microbes have been hitching rides all over the solar system via impact event ejecta [0]. On the other hand, if we find life but it's vastly different from Earth life, that would be a huge point in favor of life being ubiquitous throught the universe. Finally, even if we don't find any life whatsoever, because there is a water ocean, we might find chemical precursors to life or other interesting chemicals that could reveal to us something about how our own oceans evolved, geologically and chemically. [0] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2013.1028 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2013.1028
gorgoiler 4y ago
Living on land is kind of a niche activity that we take for granted given how many species here have perfected the art of legs and lungs. Many more forms of life either live in ponds, walking ponds (us) or mega ponds (oceans). Think of it as life coming in two forms: tiny stuff alongside big stuff, or just tiny stuff. The tiny stuff lives in water and in the absence of Europan antelopes, it’s the tiny stuff that we’re looking for.

yieldcrv 4y ago

There is simply an interest in answering the question There are other parties interested in finding life in the least habitable parts of planet earth

LatteLazy 4y ago

If there was an area in the solar system beyond earth with either sub-saharic or Antartic conditions we would look there. This is the next best thing. So we look there...

awb 4y ago

The goal isn’t necessarily to find a second home, but to study extraterrestrial life. Right now we don’t know if alien life exists and if it does how common it is, how similar it is to life on Earth, if it formed spontaneously, etc. It would give us a second data point which we could use to calibrate our understanding of one of the greatest mysteries of our existence.

wruza 4y ago

Afaik, current life ideas are all under-ice. Magnetic fields and surface conditions don’t matter, because Jupiter’s own magnetic field is a source of acute radiation. Callisto receives 7x Earth’s dose, but other surfaces are basically unhabitable.

sph 4y ago

> It's almost as if we just throwing darks in the dark just to find something. Maybe the conclusion is far more banal The only way to know one way or the other is to prove it, which means sending exploratory missions on all the possible candidates for life nearby. Only THEN you can say that there is nothing. It's not a great scientific approach to stop because you're having doubts about your hypothesis. And personally I do not care if it's a futile search or not, I just want to see high resolution pictures if not videos of Europa, its underground water, Titan and its methane lakes, and maybe Venus one day. I bet they would be even more mind blowing than the images we're seeing from Mars.

bagels 4y ago
Venus surface images, for anyone who hasn't seen them: https://universemagazine.com/en/the-last-photos-from-the-surface-of-venus-are-forty-years-old/ https://universemagazine.com/en/the-last-photos-from-the-sur...
basementcat 4y ago
Titan surface (not radar) images, for anyone who hasn’t seen them: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/Huygens%2BProbe https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/Huygens%2BProbe

throwawaylinux 4y ago

Sub-Saharan Africa gets massive amounts of rainfall, and Antarctica supports a pretty surprising diversity of life. You could well have a valid point but your "background points" are totally wrong, you'd be better just omitting them next time. Moving on from that nitpick, have you actually tried to find out why water is considered a significant indicator for life? And is it really the case that other things such as what you've listed are overlooked?

onlypositive 4y ago

Because we're looking for life of any kind. Water is the main ingredient to that as far as we know.

kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]

zuminator 4y ago

Water is a necessary component of life "as we know it," thus it makes sense that if we are going to find other life similar to life "as we know it," we're going to be inclined to check on places with water. That seems the opposite of throwing darts in the dark to me. A better metaphor is searching under the lamppost for our keys. We're inclined to search watery planets first because they seem like more straightforward candidates. Farming and roundtrip time isn't immediately that important since, at least in the short term, there's no goal of terraforming or mining these moons. It's about trying to see if we can find signs of existing life, and to see if that will teach us something about life in general in the universe, or at least in our corner of it. For example, if we find something similar to DNA on Europa, that would be a point in favor of the panspermia hypothesis, or perhaps indicate that Earth's own microbes have been hitching rides all over the solar system via impact event ejecta [0]. On the other hand, if we find life but it's vastly different from Earth life, that would be a huge point in favor of life being ubiquitous throught the universe. Finally, even if we don't find any life whatsoever, because there is a water ocean, we might find chemical precursors to life or other interesting chemicals that could reveal to us something about how our own oceans evolved, geologically and chemically. [0] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2013.1028 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2013.1028

gorgoiler 4y ago

Living on land is kind of a niche activity that we take for granted given how many species here have perfected the art of legs and lungs. Many more forms of life either live in ponds, walking ponds (us) or mega ponds (oceans). Think of it as life coming in two forms: tiny stuff alongside big stuff, or just tiny stuff. The tiny stuff lives in water and in the absence of Europan antelopes, it’s the tiny stuff that we’re looking for.