5 ms·

Four of Uranus’ largest moons likely contain an ocean layer

91 points by perihelions 4y ago

andrewstuart 4y ago
I find it extremely hard to believe any moons in the distant solar system could support life, water or not. It’s just so damn cold out there, how could life start/survive. Not that I’m any expert but at a guess.
- boxed 4y ago
  This is LIQUID water. Cold or not doesn't matter for chemistry, only if it's liquid or not.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Liquid water also can't be that cold, right? It has a freezing point...
    - getoffmycase 4y ago
      It depends on temperature, pressure and other factors like salinity.
    - tambourine_man 4y ago
      Phase transition depends on pressure too. But yeah, there's a heat source coming from the core making it possible.
      - eastof 4y ago
        This is why it would be really interesting to find out if there's any life in the lakes underneath Antarctica[1]. This would probably show life is possible on these moons. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
- pantulis 4y ago
  It may be cold, but not that cold if there is water and underground volcanic activity.
- echelon 4y ago
  We evolved from geothermal sources. Bootstrapping this way may rhyme throughout the universe. And earth still hosts plenty of geothermal life - bacterial, archaean, all the way up to tube worms.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > We evolved from geothermal sources This is qualified. There are abiogenesis models that occur entirely in e.g. tide pools.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > how could life start Idk. How did it start here? > It’s just so damn cold out there Life can find energy to run near hydrothermal vents[1], or naturally occurring nuclear reactors [2], or perhaps exploiting tidal heating[3]. I would also be not surprised if there are ways to run life on much lower energy gradients than what we are accustomed to here on Earth. Some weird biochemical tricks, perhaps a much slower life cycle. I don't know how that would look like, I'm just saying simply "Life..ehm..will find a way". 1: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vents.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vent... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating#Moons_of_Gas_Giants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating#Moons_of_Gas_Gia...
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    Yes, I agree. My personal favorite candidate for alien life is Europa, which is real cold, real barren, and not sunny on the outside, but probably has a nice warm salt water ocean inside with all kinds of hydrothermal vents and tidal heating. There's probably twice as much water in Europa's ocean than there is on all of Earth. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/europa/in-depth/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/europa/in-d... I think we'll find Cthulhu down there, if we ever get around to drilling through a few km of ice to look (or learn to scan from the surface somehow).
    - slashdev 4y ago
      Probably just some single celled life, like a batería analog. But still, that would be the biggest discovery of the century.
      - jvanderbot 4y ago
        Discovering life on other planets would be at least a Copernican-level shift in most sciences. I think it'd be the discovery to trump all other discoveries. I can't decide what's weirder: That it'd use similar DNA/RNA for replication, or that it wouldn't.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  Runaway greenhouse gas process? Maybe if the same thing that happened on Venus happens on the outer SS? See the chart here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/615311 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/615311 Earth is average 287 Kelvin. Mars can just about keep hold of all CO2 at that temperature. A smaller body would need to be colder to hold on to the same materials, or some other method of reducing escape.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > Runaway greenhouse gas process? Unlikely. The moons of Uranus appear to not have atmospheres. There is this cool paper[1] about how they measured the lack of atmosphere for one of the moons (Titania). They measured carefully the light of a star as the moon occluded it. If there were atmosphere there they would have seen it. No atmosphere, no runaway greenhouse gas process. At least not how we know it. https://hal.science/hal-00506795/document https://hal.science/hal-00506795/document
    - Chris2048 4y ago
      That's implied by the charts linked - the moons are not large enough to hold onto an atmosphere, Mars-sized seems to be around the limit. The point I'm responding to is "It's too cold out there". Maybe an earth-size planet with an atmosphere like Venus would still be warm?
- jmclnx 4y ago
  >I find it extremely hard to believe any moons in the distant solar system could support life, water or not. I cannot get into the article, but maybe gravitational stress on the moons from Uranus is enough to provide heat.
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  > It’s just so damn cold out there, how could life start/survive. "On Earth, the ocean floor is home to hydrothermal vents that spout hot water, nourishing life in an otherwise inhospitable environment. Scientists think similar vents could exist on other worlds such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus." https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/17647/earth-undersea-seeps-vents-and-volcanoes/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/17647/earth-undersea-...
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  If there is liquid water, it means it's not colder than the antarctic sea, which holds a lot of life. Unless there is some weird pressure + salt shenanigans I don't know about.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Life on Earth is posited to have begun with a primordial soup of the right chemicals and it began with microscopic stuff. My recollection is viruses are not deemed to fit the definition of "alive" yet contain RNA and two strands of RNA equals DNA, the code for more complex life forms. It's quite the elegant system. Also, there are microbes found in volcanic vents and in Antarctica. I don't think temperature is big a limiting factor as you seem to think. As someone once said: Life finds a way.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  Sunlight is entirely irrelevant for the habitability of any of these internal oceans, including Europa’s. The pertinent energy sources are internal heat and tidal interactions, distance from the sun does not matter at all.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > It’s just so damn cold out there, how could life start/survive. It won't always be this way. The sun is destined to become a red giant, which may put the Solar System's distant watery and icy moons in a comfy habitable zone.
Razengan 4y ago
If we ever colonize those parts will we rename the planet?
- Etrnl_President 4y ago
  [dead]
- differentView 4y ago
  Yes, Urectum.
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    make sure Farnsworth's smelloscope is ready to collect data before and after the change
- erazor42 4y ago
  I'm wondering how many mission to Uranus were cancelled/never created to avoid bad PR, with all the jokes and stuff.
- mjklin 4y ago
  For Greek speakers it just means “sky” so no big deal. The namer of the planet was German (Johann Bode) so he wouldn’t have known its unfortunate double meaning in English. Every time you say it it’s like a punchline.
mike10921 4y ago
Something I learned recently. There exists a 1967 international treaty that no space exploration can touch external water of any sort to prevent earth duelers from contaminating water outside Earth. https://spacethoughtsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/addressing-media-missteps-about-the-outer-space-treaty-and-water-sources-on-mars/#:~:text=The%20world's%20space%20powers%20are,it%20with%20life%20from%20Earth https://spacethoughtsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/addressin....
- kelsolaar 4y ago
  Would not it go both ways? We would not want to be contaminated either.
  - Zircom 4y ago
    Getting to these planets or moons that have water in the first place is already hard, getting back from them is pretty much such a big nonstarter at the moment it's not worth thinking or worrying about.
- rasz 4y ago
  Coincidentally Outer Space Treaty has same signatories as 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Feel free to look up how that last one worked out.
gooseus 4y ago
As others have noted, geothermal vents could provide a place for life to get started, as it is thought to have occurred here. One thing that I think is important to consider is that what is really needed is an energy gradient which can be leveraged to do the work of creating all the different kinds of compounds one would need to produce something we'd call "alive". I think the other article from quanta about "assembly theory"[1] is a good one to consider in this context. What would be the "Assembly Contingent" of a world like Europa or these other moons? My guess would be that there might be enough material and energy potential to allow pathways to bacteria analogues (not that these def exist, but they're possible), but not nearly enough to support the variation and specialization required to reach multi-cellular life. [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theory-for-the-assembly-of-life-in-the-universe-20230504/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theory-for-the-assembly...
rafark 4y ago
NASA about to get serious about Uranus.
- throwawaymanbot 4y ago
  [dead]

91 points by perihelions 4y ago

I find it extremely hard to believe any moons in the distant solar system could support life, water or not. It’s just so damn cold out there, how could life start/survive. Not that I’m any expert but at a guess.

boxed 4y ago
This is LIQUID water. Cold or not doesn't matter for chemistry, only if it's liquid or not.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Liquid water also can't be that cold, right? It has a freezing point...
  - getoffmycase 4y ago
    It depends on temperature, pressure and other factors like salinity.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    Phase transition depends on pressure too. But yeah, there's a heat source coming from the core making it possible.
    - eastof 4y ago
      This is why it would be really interesting to find out if there's any life in the lakes underneath Antarctica[1]. This would probably show life is possible on these moons. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
pantulis 4y ago
It may be cold, but not that cold if there is water and underground volcanic activity.
echelon 4y ago
We evolved from geothermal sources. Bootstrapping this way may rhyme throughout the universe. And earth still hosts plenty of geothermal life - bacterial, archaean, all the way up to tube worms.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > We evolved from geothermal sources This is qualified. There are abiogenesis models that occur entirely in e.g. tide pools.
krisoft 4y ago
> how could life start Idk. How did it start here? > It’s just so damn cold out there Life can find energy to run near hydrothermal vents[1], or naturally occurring nuclear reactors [2], or perhaps exploiting tidal heating[3]. I would also be not surprised if there are ways to run life on much lower energy gradients than what we are accustomed to here on Earth. Some weird biochemical tricks, perhaps a much slower life cycle. I don't know how that would look like, I'm just saying simply "Life..ehm..will find a way". 1: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vents.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vent... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating#Moons_of_Gas_Giants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating#Moons_of_Gas_Gia...
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Yes, I agree. My personal favorite candidate for alien life is Europa, which is real cold, real barren, and not sunny on the outside, but probably has a nice warm salt water ocean inside with all kinds of hydrothermal vents and tidal heating. There's probably twice as much water in Europa's ocean than there is on all of Earth. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/europa/in-depth/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/europa/in-d... I think we'll find Cthulhu down there, if we ever get around to drilling through a few km of ice to look (or learn to scan from the surface somehow).
  - slashdev 4y ago
    Probably just some single celled life, like a batería analog. But still, that would be the biggest discovery of the century.
    - jvanderbot 4y ago
      Discovering life on other planets would be at least a Copernican-level shift in most sciences. I think it'd be the discovery to trump all other discoveries. I can't decide what's weirder: That it'd use similar DNA/RNA for replication, or that it wouldn't.
Chris2048 4y ago
Runaway greenhouse gas process? Maybe if the same thing that happened on Venus happens on the outer SS? See the chart here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/615311 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/615311 Earth is average 287 Kelvin. Mars can just about keep hold of all CO2 at that temperature. A smaller body would need to be colder to hold on to the same materials, or some other method of reducing escape.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > Runaway greenhouse gas process? Unlikely. The moons of Uranus appear to not have atmospheres. There is this cool paper[1] about how they measured the lack of atmosphere for one of the moons (Titania). They measured carefully the light of a star as the moon occluded it. If there were atmosphere there they would have seen it. No atmosphere, no runaway greenhouse gas process. At least not how we know it. https://hal.science/hal-00506795/document https://hal.science/hal-00506795/document
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    That's implied by the charts linked - the moons are not large enough to hold onto an atmosphere, Mars-sized seems to be around the limit. The point I'm responding to is "It's too cold out there". Maybe an earth-size planet with an atmosphere like Venus would still be warm?
jmclnx 4y ago
>I find it extremely hard to believe any moons in the distant solar system could support life, water or not. I cannot get into the article, but maybe gravitational stress on the moons from Uranus is enough to provide heat.
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
> It’s just so damn cold out there, how could life start/survive. "On Earth, the ocean floor is home to hydrothermal vents that spout hot water, nourishing life in an otherwise inhospitable environment. Scientists think similar vents could exist on other worlds such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus." https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/17647/earth-undersea-seeps-vents-and-volcanoes/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/17647/earth-undersea-...
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
If there is liquid water, it means it's not colder than the antarctic sea, which holds a lot of life. Unless there is some weird pressure + salt shenanigans I don't know about.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
Life on Earth is posited to have begun with a primordial soup of the right chemicals and it began with microscopic stuff. My recollection is viruses are not deemed to fit the definition of "alive" yet contain RNA and two strands of RNA equals DNA, the code for more complex life forms. It's quite the elegant system. Also, there are microbes found in volcanic vents and in Antarctica. I don't think temperature is big a limiting factor as you seem to think. As someone once said: Life finds a way.
Sharlin 4y ago
Sunlight is entirely irrelevant for the habitability of any of these internal oceans, including Europa’s. The pertinent energy sources are internal heat and tidal interactions, distance from the sun does not matter at all.
Maursault 4y ago
> It’s just so damn cold out there, how could life start/survive. It won't always be this way. The sun is destined to become a red giant, which may put the Solar System's distant watery and icy moons in a comfy habitable zone.

Razengan 4y ago

If we ever colonize those parts will we rename the planet?

Etrnl_President 4y ago
[dead]
differentView 4y ago
Yes, Urectum.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  make sure Farnsworth's smelloscope is ready to collect data before and after the change
erazor42 4y ago
I'm wondering how many mission to Uranus were cancelled/never created to avoid bad PR, with all the jokes and stuff.
mjklin 4y ago
For Greek speakers it just means “sky” so no big deal. The namer of the planet was German (Johann Bode) so he wouldn’t have known its unfortunate double meaning in English. Every time you say it it’s like a punchline.

mike10921 4y ago

Something I learned recently. There exists a 1967 international treaty that no space exploration can touch external water of any sort to prevent earth duelers from contaminating water outside Earth. https://spacethoughtsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/addressing-media-missteps-about-the-outer-space-treaty-and-water-sources-on-mars/#:~:text=The%20world's%20space%20powers%20are,it%20with%20life%20from%20Earth https://spacethoughtsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/addressin....

kelsolaar 4y ago
Would not it go both ways? We would not want to be contaminated either.
- Zircom 4y ago
  Getting to these planets or moons that have water in the first place is already hard, getting back from them is pretty much such a big nonstarter at the moment it's not worth thinking or worrying about.
rasz 4y ago
Coincidentally Outer Space Treaty has same signatories as 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Feel free to look up how that last one worked out.

gooseus 4y ago

As others have noted, geothermal vents could provide a place for life to get started, as it is thought to have occurred here. One thing that I think is important to consider is that what is really needed is an energy gradient which can be leveraged to do the work of creating all the different kinds of compounds one would need to produce something we'd call "alive". I think the other article from quanta about "assembly theory"[1] is a good one to consider in this context. What would be the "Assembly Contingent" of a world like Europa or these other moons? My guess would be that there might be enough material and energy potential to allow pathways to bacteria analogues (not that these def exist, but they're possible), but not nearly enough to support the variation and specialization required to reach multi-cellular life. [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theory-for-the-assembly-of-life-in-the-universe-20230504/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theory-for-the-assembly...

rafark 4y ago

NASA about to get serious about Uranus.

throwawaymanbot 4y ago
[dead]