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NASA spacecraft to probe possibility of life in Europa's salty ocean
- prevailrob 2y agoAll these worlds are yours - except Europa
- helsinkiandrew 2y agoAttempt no landing there. > Clipper is a pricey gamble. Even though it was scaled back from a design that included a lander
- Simon_ORourke 2y ago> Attempt no landing there. And what did folks try and do in the sequel? Attempt to do a s*t-ton of moon landings!! Best commentary on the nature of humanity in any work of fiction since the Bible.
- pcardoso 2y agoI think this message was sent after the landings happened and after Jupiter's ignition. When they were stranded in Europa it was still an icy moon. For those wondering, this is from 2010, the sequel book/movie to 2001 a Space Odyssey.
- pavlov 2y agoClarke's third book "2061" describes the attempts to land on Europa despite the forbidding alien message.
- pcardoso 2y agoMea culpa, you are right! I forgot about that.
- xp84 2y agoI remember finding this series greatly engrossing, including 2061 and 3001, when I read them at age 12 or so. I wonder now if I should attempt re-reading. My only worry is that it'll take me until the year 2061 at the amount of free time I have today :(
- nihzm 2y ago> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. IMO the title of the post should be "Ice Skater" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- _7acn 2y agoJust in case, let’s check if one of Jupiter’s moons, packed with salt and freezing near absolute zero, happens to have life. Sounds like a great way to spend public money.
- _7acn 2y ago"What an ignorant fool! There could totally be life there!"
- selectnull 2y ago"near absolute zero" is not nearly correct. The temperature of Europa ocean is believed to be between 0 and -4 degrees Celsius.
- Aaron2222 2y agoFrom Wikipedia[0]: "The scientific consensus is that a layer of liquid water exists beneath Europa's surface, and that heat from tidal flexing allows the subsurface ocean to remain liquid." Liquid water is hardly "freezing near absolute zero". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean
- gilleain 2y agoWhy would salt be a problem? There are single celled organisms known as halophiles that survive extreme salt. Do you know what range of concentrations are reasonable for life, or which salts might be present on Europa?
- 9dev 2y agoJust one aircraft carrier less, and NASA can send probes to most of Jupiter‘s moons and still have money left for marketing…
- hoseja 2y agoYeah but it won't be NASA sending them but CNSA.
- scoofy 2y agoFinally... I've been waiting for this almost my entire adult life. Liquid oceans beneath the surface. A brownish-red smattering of color despite the solid ice on the surface... maybe it's irradiated salt or magnesium sulfate, but it's an awful odd color for ice. We need to send a probe to Europa, like yesterday, and we need to send one that can get below the ice and look around.
- singularity2001 2y agosame. So to shortcut the big question "when"? April 2030
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago> We need to send a probe to Europa, like yesterday, and we need to send one that can get below the ice and look around. IMO, "need" is a strong word here and if I thought that this is something we needed to do I would re-examine my priorities. We need to feed and house people, we need to stop the war machine, we need to slow consumerism to slow climate change.
- lukan 2y agoWell, I think we need to do all of it. Explore space together or in competition, instead of war. And climate change is a concern for everyone.
- arethuza 2y agoWorth noting that the ESA Juice mission will be at Jupiter at the same time as Clipper and the teams are already working together: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/Frequently_Asked_Questions https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/...
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoWe cannot do all of it. The money and the manpower does not exist to do all of it. We need to prioritize. Have you ever tried to survive in the wilderness? Shelter, water, fire, and food. Priorities. You would not spend your time trying to find out if there is a form of life 20 feet below you. Right now on earth there are plenty of people who do not have these basics.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- alex_suzuki 2y ago„The Europa Report“ is IMO a pretty underrated movie: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/europa_report https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/europa_report
- space_oddity 2y agoA hidden gem in the sci-fi genre
- rwmj 2y agoThis is a great low budget sci-fi film (and pretty scary at the end too).
- ahoka 2y agoA fun game game that takes place on Europa: https://store.steampowered.com/app/602960/Barotrauma/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/602960/Barotrauma/
- Tade0 2y agoNothing like a good Europan handshake. I am this close to suggesting a round of Barotrauma in the next team-building exercise I'll participate in, as it reveals a lot about what works and what doesn't in a team.
- marklar423 2y agoOne of my favorite hard-scifi movies ever.
- duxup 2y agoI liked the film overall, but the talking heads style narration was tedious. It was a strange film as I loved parts, hated parts. I get why they do the narration that way, but man I do not care about the folks narrating their experience back on earth when we could be watching the folks on / near Europa. It has an unintentional self important vibe about the "I was on my way into the office when something happened." whole thing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wigster 2y agoa fine excuse to listen to a top tune by the multi talented Thomas Dolby. Thomas Dolby - Europa And The Pirate Twins https://youtu.be/qkj4p3rI17s?si=1Ui8lskcljKfGo-E https://youtu.be/qkj4p3rI17s?si=1Ui8lskcljKfGo-E
- danwills 2y agoI guess there's very little chance of accidentally transferring earth-style life to Europa's oceans with this flyby kind of plan.. that's a plus!
- criddell 2y agoEven if we did accidentally seed life on Europa, it would be a pretty interesting result. I wonder if any organic matter from Earth has ever fallen on any other planets or moons?
- BitwiseFool 2y agoI'd be surprised if this hadn't happened at some point. Rocks from Mars found their way over to Antarctica. However something to consider is that whatever biological material that ends up landing elsewhere probably wouldn't be able to survive and reproduce. I say that because even the hardiest microbial organisms on Earth still depend on the activity of other species in the ecosystem. For instance, only certain species of bacteria produce Vitamin B and I can't think of any species that is completely self-reliant. It's one thing to keep a cell from dying in a harsh environment, but it would have to bootstrap itself into metabolizing and reproducing in a barren environment with no prior life to consume building blocks from. That being said, I'm not enough of a biologist to know if there are any extremophile bacteria which are completely self sufficient. If there are, we can rule out my layman's assertion/thought experiment.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoIt's ironic that we are searching for life on other planets when we are eradicating the life right here on ours.
- MattGaiser 2y agoNot really. A small minority care about space life. A small minority care about conservation.
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago> A small minority care about conservation. A small minority care, until it is too late. The everybody cares. It is the job of the scientists and governments to help us understand why we should care. But both are captured by oligarchs and people looking for their own power and prestige.
- lukan 2y agoAllmost everyone cares about conservation .. but about conserving the immediate life around them, e.g. their life and the close people around them. Climate change is still too abstract for most people to be a real concern. If they are cold, coal makes them warm now. I more and more find truth in the simplified statement: "we are little more than confused apes after all" We are capable of so much more .. but it takes time and whether we have the time to evolve some collective consciouss about the bigger problems concerning us all, remains to be seen.
- ywvcbk 2y agoI don’t think we’re eradicating life, just most natural ecosystems and ecological diversity.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoI meant life as in indiviudal lives. Saying what you said is like saying "Stalin didn't eradicate life. Just a few million people."
- moconnor 2y ago“We’re not a life search mission. We’re a habitability mission,” says Robert Pappalardo, Clipper’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the mission.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoHow can we ensure not 1 of the quintillion spores it will pick up upon interaction with earth will not survive transport and contaminate Europa?
- XorNot 2y agoThe surface of Europa is hard vacuum and its not landing there, with several miles of ice to the ocean. It's as protected from contamination as it's ever going to get.
- jermaustin1 2y agoWe can't any more so than any other lander/prob/rover we've sent. And will it really matter when we eventually (probably not in our lives) send people there anyway. All their body-biome and other contaminants will come with them, too. We are going to contaminate the solar system with humans eventually. A spore that may survive and MAY be viable is the least of the Europa's problem.
- Mistletoe 2y agoWe do hydrogen peroxide rinses of everything, but there are some organisms that can survive even this. I worked with some of them like B. pumilus that came back from the space station and exposure to space. Incredible resistance to hydrogen peroxide. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22680694/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22680694/ https://astrobiology.com/2014/05/space-station-research-studies-exposure-of-life-to-vacuum-of-space.html https://astrobiology.com/2014/05/space-station-research-stud...
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- EugeneOZ 2y agoWill the levels of radiation allow life to exist there?
- perihelions 2y agoThere's no radiation in the subterranean oceans, which is what they are investigating. (Radiation shielding is an exponential function; a few meters of water is, for most purposes, total shielding [0]. The major radiation source on Europa is solar particles trapped in Jupiter's magnet belts, which bombard Europa's airless surface. The ocean begins multiple tens of kilometers below that surface). [0] https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
- EugeneOZ 2y agoThanks a lot!
- ricksunny 2y agoI wonder how many nat security council meetings there would be between a discovery of life on Europa and the public getting to hear about it, for cases: 1) the life is non-intelligent 2) the life is intelligent
- andyp-kw 2y agoEither way, it would force us to re-think our practice of broadcasting into space.
- joshstrange 2y agoPerhaps, though I would think that finding life in our solar system does not necessarily mean life will be outside our solar system. As in did something happen in our solar system to spark life. Also, I think the ship has sailed on not broadcasting into space.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoShould we bring life there - just in case we find none? Like some deep sea smoker sample of life, transported to another deep sea smoker?
- justmarc 2y agoCan you just please let us know when you actually find something worthy of our attention?
- WalterBright 2y agoNow that SpaceX can blast cargo into space cheaply, what we need to do is send a probe to every planet and moon in the solar system. Just because: 1. we can 2. we have no idea what we'll find No excuses! Oh, and 10 more James Webb telescopes, too!
- dgrin91 2y agoThe problem with probes, landers and satellites, especially what, is that the rocket isn't the limiting factor. Development of the payload is the vast majority of the cost & time
- exitb 2y agoWell, the more you make of something, the cheaper it gets. Things also get easier when you're less constrained for weight and volume. I imagine that Starship delivering a robot all the way to the Mars surface would make things significantly cheaper. Mars is also a difficult place to land on, as it's very big for its thin atmosphere. If we had a system that can successfully land on Mars, it could be fairly easily used on other planets and moons.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoSpaceX plans on sending 5 starships to Mars in 2 years (optimistic) or 4 years (pessimistic). Wonder what sort of stuff they'll send in the payload. Just supplies for the astronauts who come 2 years later or will they allow for rideshare of scientific payloads?
- WalterBright 2y agoWe have a system that has landed successfully on Mars, several different ones.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoA lot of that is because getting something launched was so hard (time, money, dealing with government grants, etc.) that they made damn sure the thing was going to be robust and work. The prices SpaceX will be launching at allows us to just chuck some off-the-shelf hardware together and not care so much if half of the hundreds of probes we send out fail.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lockedinspace 2y agoSpace is undeniably fascinating, and it's completely natural to be captivated by the search for extraterrestrial life. However, the key point I want to emphasize is this: Our existence proves that life is possible. While discovering life elsewhere would indeed be extraordinary, it is ultimately within the realm of possibility. What would be truly remarkable is making such a discovery within our lifetimes—that would be the real stroke of luck, rather than the mere fact that life exists.
- lisper 2y ago> Our existence proves that life is possible. Obviously. But it would still be nice to know how probable or improbable it is.
- lockedinspace 2y agoYes, and if that occurs during our lifetimes, that's the jackpot. I would guess that now it's quite unlikely, we might be an ant colony far, far away from others. Finding specific biota or small organisms seems like our most effective approach.
- neaden 2y agoIf life independently started in two places in our solar system in fairly different places, then it would be reasonable to think that it is fairly common and we would expect it in most solar systems. If life only exists on Earth in our solar system, then it's more reasonable to think life is fairly rare.
- zardo 2y agoAlso no possible, there's life on Europa and it shares a common ancestor with life on Earth. https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/08/22/22081/earth-ejecta-could-have-seeded-life-on-europa/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/08/22/22081/earth-ejec...
- sidcool 2y agoI can bet $1000 that Europa at least has a life form that represents a virus or bacteria. It may not be similar, but it must have a biochemical form.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 1970-01-01 2y agoYou won't be able to collect on this for ~100yr
- tiborsaas 2y agoMaybe he can make the bet and let the grandchildren collect it.
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoI’d bet it has more than that. Check out all the cool stuff they found swimming around in some subsurface lake/river in Antarctica… before they popped in a camera it was yet another “surely complex life couldn’t possibly survive in that”… The more we look around the more wrong the “surely complex life couldn’t exist in that” crowd become.
- digging 2y agoYes, but also, we don't know where complex life began on earth. It probably wasn't in extreme cold, but who knows. Certain extreme environments may be more amenable to adaptation than to abiogenesis. There are still just many many unknowns, which is why we need more missions like this!
- bbor 2y agoRandom side note: it appears that the scientific journal publishing the relevant paper is also publishing this science journalism piece, which makes me wonder why I’ve never seen that before. Why does Popular Science even exist anymore, really? Why don’t the journals just hire journalists directly? It would presumably cut down on clickbait misunderstandings, and it would give the journals a tool in the upcoming antitrust litigation against them. If the journalism is good enough, the journals might even get to net-zero value add someday!!
- pmontra 2y agoTime to print JPL's poster about Europa https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/europa-jpl-travel-poster/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/europa-jpl-travel-poster/
- afh1 2y agoKind of clickbait. It will just fly by and remotely probe the surface. "We’re not a life search mission. We’re a habitability mission".
- thepuglor 2y agoI really hope this mission is designed with VR in mind. Obviously any feed will be delayed, but it would be amazing if Nasa figured out a way to package the vessel approach and other key moments as a livestream VR experience. It should feel like the modern version of everyone watching the moon landing (not that i was there). They could even create an abstract visualization of the total number of people of viewing, so that when you look back into outer space you are overwhelmed with the realization that this is a moment for all of humanity, not just another stream amongst so much drivel. Best VR use case I can think of!
- BitwiseFool 2y agoIf I had multi-millionaire or billionaire money I'd put a satellite in low earth orbit with high definition cameras just to livestream the view in VR.
- 1970-01-01 2y ago>Not only is it closer to Earth and easier to visit than Enceladus, but evidence suggests its ocean may have existed for 4.5 billion years—longer than Earth’s oceans Here's what I don't like. Nothing living appears on Europa's surface. In the same 4.5 billion years, Earth went from single-cell life to whales, jungles, and humans.
- itchyjunk 2y agoImplication being if life exists in oceans -> surface life must exist in ~4B years? That does seem to be true for Earth I guess.
- Etheryte 2y agoI mean, all of Europa is covered with a thick layer of ice and conditions above the ice layer are far from favorable for life. I'm not sure why you would expect to see anything on the surface?
- ericbarrett 2y agoRadiation levels on Europa's surface are about 5 Sv in 24 hours, which is a massive dose; for reference, this is enough to kill 50% of humans exposed to it and make the survivors extremely ill. It is also extremely cold (-171C mean) and near-vacuum (100 nanopascal). If there is life in Europa and it bears any resemblance whatsoever to the biology we know, it simply couldn't exist on the surface. Even the hardiest single-celled organisms here, which have also had 4.5B years to evolve into uncontested niches, could barely survive a limited exposure to these factors.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoCheck out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosynthesis_(metabolism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosynthesis_(metabolism) I do assume this extreme level of cold and vacuum can also be acclimated in those 4.x billion years
- ericbarrett 2y ago
- sigzero 2y ago"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE." Pretty cool to actually be doing this.
- royce 2y agoSomeone seems to have dropped the "EXCEPT EUROPA" part. ;)
- maitola 2y ago"We’re not a life search mission. We’re a habitability mission,” says Robert Pappalardo, Clipper’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the mission." So we are going to wait 7 years, and spend $5B to actually not search for life on Europa? Why? Sometimes it feels like Nasa is doing everything possible for not searching for life outside earth, which would be a game changing discovery for humanity, several orders of magnitude more important than the habitability of Europa.
- m3kw9 2y agoSearching for life to confirm would only be useful if you have lots of pocket change. We all know life exists outside the solar system, only the biggest ego maniacs will truly believe humans are the only life in the universe
- sigzero 2y ago> We all know life exists outside the solar system, only the biggest ego maniacs will truly believe humans are the only life in the universe That statement isn't remotely true and it all depends entirely on what you define "life" as being.
- cooper_ganglia 2y agoI understand the view that life likely exists elsewhere in the universe, and I agree that, given the vast number of planets and galaxies, it's certainly a plausible idea. The sheer scale of the universe, coupled with our growing knowledge of exoplanets and extremophiles—organisms that thrive in conditions once thought inhospitable to life—makes it reasonable to think life could exist beyond Earth. That being said, I have no logical reason to know life exists anywhere else except on this planet. I think it's important to differentiate between the likelihood of something and claiming certainty about it. While the possibility of extraterrestrial life is exciting and worth exploring, until we have direct evidence, we can't confidently say it’s out there. In fact, we can't even answer the philosophical question, "Do other people aside from me even actually exist?" with 100% certainty. This brings us to the ironic part: sometimes, claiming we know life exists elsewhere can be a reflection of the same kind of ego that leads others to believe humanity is uniquely special in the universe. Both positions can, in a way, stem from an overestimation of our ability to know the unknowable. I think it's great to remain curious and open to discovery, but also humble about the limits of our current knowledge. :)
- takinola 2y agoIf we were to find DNA based life on Europa, would there be a way to tell if it came from Earth, seeded Earth or both came from an external source?
- anothername12 2y agoLEO WiFi, international space stations testing alfalfa growing in zero-g, “space walks” and moon returns. Meh. It’s the robotics probes like this one, Cassini, and Voyagers that are the exciting missions. Far bigger return for science.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago"It's the spring of 2031" Have to admit I read this and my immediate emotional reaction was "that's so far away, that's the far far future" .. and then realized, no, no it is not in fact that far away.. and I've just ... gotten old.
- bschmidt1 2y agoAnyone who grew up with artist impressions and scientific guesses about Pluto was quite surprised when the first close-up photos of Pluto were released. NASA was very wrong about how it looked and what it was made of. The blue we all thought it was came from its atmosphere as seen from far away, not because it was an icy world reflecting blue light through ice and snow - the ice and snow on its planetary surface is a lot more red and brown like Titan because it's methane (like on Titan, and presumably by the color of Europa, on Europa too). I know we have high fidelity photos of [a reddish brown] Europa, but when I was younger seeing those documentaries of the "oceans under the surface" they were always depicted as blue with alien-looking dolphins swimming through them. To this day they claim it's composed of "water ice", despite being that color in the newer high definition photos. Another commenter here said "it's an awful odd color for ice" - it's probably methane, like Pluto and Titan, not water ice. Maybe I'm overly skeptical, but just connecting dots.
- LetsGetTechnicl 2y agoTbh I think $5 billion is a reasonable amount of money for something cool like this. I wish we could shovel the billions of dollars we spend on war and destruction into science, and the betterment of all humanity. But, alas...
- omegaworks 2y ago>But, alas... Please try your best to resist apathy. Contact your representative and let them know your priorities, especially in light of a looming government shutdown that threatens funding to exactly these kinds of initiatives.
- ck2 2y agoNo matter how careful, I don't see how they don't accidentally introduce earth bacteria to other planets and moons? We have life in practically every hostile location on earth and bacteria survive even the most constantly sterilized environments like hospitals and clean-rooms?
- pvaldes 2y agoWhy do we need to drill every Km? Sonar is used everywhere in the sea and whales can sing toward 15 Km.
- ghostoftiber 2y agoI missed the A and read E on the end of "europa" and was like "ah yes I see you have met the French".
- Phelinofist 2y agoReminds of the book by Brandon Q. Morris "Enceladus"
- snackjack_38294 2y ago[dead]
- knowitnone 2y agoIf there is no life, why not plant it?
- diggernet 2y agoI already know what they'll find.. https://www.amazon.com/Hardness-Minds-Europan-First-Contact-ebook/dp/B09WKWBNFG https://www.amazon.com/Hardness-Minds-Europan-First-Contact-...
- scrubs 2y agoI applaud the author (andrews). The guy can write well. A great read, a great mission. Good luck NASA!!
- Dban1 2y agotime to get back to playing Warframe
- biggestlou 2y agoI'm still looking for intelligent life on this planet!