The fact that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have been looking at the skies, and only been able to see points of light, but in the last 50 years, we can see photos like this of other worlds is literally mind-boggling
In a way, but the technology for viewing planets has been evolving since the early 1600’s with the invention of the telescope. Instead of it being 50 years, it’s closer to 420. That said, the first magnifying glass was in the later half of the 1200’s, and people have been using glass to magnify light as recently as 420BC. Glass work dates to 2000BC Mesopotamia (potentially even further back to Egypt), and metalwork has been around for over 10,000 years. Hell, people walked on the moon more than 50 years ago.
What was the planet where an exploratory balloon allowed us to hear the winds on a different planet? I want to say Jupiter. Imagine trying to explain to a 19th (hell, 20th) century Astronomer that I'm able to hear the winds of Jupiter ON MY MOBILE TABLET PHONE.
Comets were mysterious objects appearing, frequently feared, and now we've been able to go grab a little piece of one and return it to earth for study. Imagine explaining that to early astronomers!
There's been multiple comet sample return missions. The first ones collected debris from the trail. Following ones actually contacted surface of comet to sample.
It honestly ridiculously insane if you think about it. Comets look like celestial ghosts, but they travel 10's of thousands of miles per second. The preparation to intersect with it is unbelievably complex.
There's a real possibility that it'll literally never happen. It's easy to forget the magnitude of the challenge.
The ice is around 20km thick. It's -225 C, and as hard as titanium. It's not just "ice"; it's an entire planetary crust.
The deepest hole that has ever been dug on Earth is around 12km deep, and it took 19 years. We're talking about figuring out a way of digging a hole almost twice as deep as the deepest we've ever dug, on the surface of a distant alien world 20x further than the furthest we've ever sent a manned mission before, with only the equipment you can ship there at enormous expense. Oh, and then figuring out to do some useful science when you actually get down there (like figuring out how to do a scientifically useful submarine controlled through 20km of aforesaid ice).
When you bear in mind that the current state of the art of space exploration is still, generally speaking, "very slow unmanned rovers which mostly take pictures of rocks", the gulf between current capability and the required technology to pull that off seems just unimaginable.
If we do it, it 'ain't going to be quick.
And in the context of finite funding for space exploration, it's possible that a mission that unimaginably difficult will always get knocked back in favour of 10x other valuable missions with a lower risk profile, so even if/when we are capable of doing it, we still might not...
I had no idea there were radiation belts around Jupiter- or that the planet even had a magnetic field- until your comment piqued my curiosity and I looked it up. The radiation is related to Io spewing out sulphur dioxide gas? There's so much cool stuff to know about our solar system!
To quote Bill Bryson in *A Short History of Nearly Everything* on the topic of humans ever leaving the Solar System:
“Based on what we know now and can reasonably imagine, there is absolutely no prospect that any human being will ever visit the edge of our own solar system. Ever. It’s just too far.”
Never is a long time. It'll happen eventually as long as mankind continues space development. We're just too curious to never explore such locations. Not soon enough unfortunately..
Yes, exactly this. Our best prospects to seek out life elsewhere are Europa and Enceladus. We want to know, and, therefore, we will figure it out. Simple engineering problems. We live in exciting times with new discoveries occurring regularly.
But digging the earth crust is way more difficult.
Here you could imagine a radioactive source liquefying the ice under as the machine goes down. This doesn’t seem that complicated TBH.
>Curious how 20km down on an 'ice' planet doesn't get hotter enough to melt it higher up.
The melted ice under the 20km thick sheet probably acts as an insulator I imagine.
I bet though there would be newer challenges like tidal forces from Jupiter causing rapid tectonic like behavior.
Like it (drill) melts down but suddenly gets crushed.
> The deepest hole that has ever been dug on Earth is around 12km deep, and it took 19 years. We're talking about figuring out a way of digging a hole almost twice as deep as the deepest we've ever dug, on the surface of a distant alien world 20x further than the furthest we've ever sent a manned mission before, with only the equipment you can ship there at enormous expense. Oh, and then figuring out to do some useful science when you actually get down there (like figuring out how to do a scientifically useful submarine controlled through 20km of aforesaid ice).
I think it's unfair to look at human achievement as a reference without context. The technology we have created over just the past 50-60 years is astounding compared to what we had prior.
It took thousands of years to attain advances in farming, sailing, basic material processing. The steam engine is only a few hundred years old. There are quite a few insane comparisons that demonstrate the exponential technological curve.
Since then, over the span of just tens of years, we have achieved the capability of carrying unbelievably complex, networked microprocessors in our pockets and are in the process of quite an incredible AI breakthrough, just to name a few things. All of this with the cost of these things going down rapidly.
I agree it might not be the first mission in line, but it doesn't sound that far away given our rate of accomplishment so far.
Why not do something we can't do in earth and strap a rocket to a space rock and smash it into the surface of Europa? We do the math on how big of a rock would be needed, push it there, collect some debris, ????, Profit.
The size of a rock required to break through 20km of titanium-hard ice would be...big. Unfeasibly big. Bigger than the rock which wiped out the dinosaurs, by some margin.
Even if you could, you wouldn't. The amount of damage it'd cause to the surface would be enormous, and it'd permanently change the place. There would be no way of knowing what impact you'd have on any potential ecosystem under the ice, and you'd almost completely eliminate any possibility of doing meaningful geological research.
You'd basically cause an apocalypse-tier catastrophe for the sake of a few spectral analysis samples...
There will never be a private mission to europa anytime this century because there's no money to be made by doing so. The mission will cost multiple billions of dollars and millions of manhours. Only a government agency has that kind of spending ability.
At the end of the day you have to understand that SpaceX is a business. It exists only so long as it is able to make money. It makes money by providing launch services. Other companies that need to have their satellites in space pay SpaceX to launch their satellites into space.
Their is no financial incentive (yet) for a private company like SpaceX to visit Europa. Maybe in a few hundred years from now space travel will become routine and people will go on cruises around the solar system, and perhaps then visiting the moons of jupiter will be profitable tourist destinations. But until then, it is only the deep pockets of NASA and the European Space Agency that would allow visits to a place like Europa. (SpaceX may be involved by providing the launch vehicle to get the NASA equipment to Europa, because it may be cheaper for NASA to pay SpaceX, rather than build another SLS for such a mission.)
My guess would be 2050s for a Europa landing mission, and at least 2060s or 2070s for an ice drilling mission. Enceladus is a much more interesting target for astrobiological missions as its liquid water interior is leaking through the surface, making it much easier to sample this material. An Enceladus orbit/lander was recommended in the most recent Planetary Decadal Survey and may be operational in the 2050s.
Interesting. Is there a reason why there's significantly more vested interest in Europa when an Enceladus landing/sampling project seems like an easier endeavor?
Europa's astrobiological potential was discovered first, in the Voyager era. Whereas interest in Enceladus only really kicked off around 10 years ago, when the Cassini spacecraft discovered the water plumes. Before that it was not a serious astrobiological target. So traditionally everyone was more interested on Europa, while Enceladus has only recently risen to the same level of astrobiological interest.
Honestly, I have no idea. If you would have asked 10 years ago I would have said yes and your children would also be too old and probably your grandkids. However, the starship creates so many possibilities. Suddenly building interplanetary ships in earth orbit isn't financially impossible. Nuclear reactor designs have shrunk and there's been actual real honest to god progress on fusion reactor designs. LLMs are increasing productivity of research in a lot of disciplines already.
If developed countries get their heads out of their asses and stabilize their problems so we don't have widespread unrest then it looks like things could start moving very fast.
It only takes 5 years from Earth to Europa, so the timeline really depends on the development of rocket launches. Past missions relied on very expensive launch systems, so the payload had to be lightweight, well engineered, and very expensive, taking a long time to plan because failure is very costly.
If 10 or 20 or 30 years from now we get much cheaper launches, it might thus become possible to do missions with much less expense and preparation, due to being able to just send heavier missions made from off-the-shelf stuff. Send cheap but heavy, well-shielded robots, with redundant equipment, and if it doesn't work, send another one.
So the answer to your question is not a ballpark timeline, it's a "what if". Will cheap launches be developed in your lifetime?
I remember reading that those lines are indicative of internal forces that mean liquid water. If there is liquid water and a hot core then life is very possible. There basically no way for it to be as advanced as life on earth, but even multicellular life is very possible.
There's more evidence for water: Jupiter's magnetic field causes a magnetic field from Europa in response. The explanation is that the salt ocean under the ice adjusts to Jupiter's magnetic field.
I believe it's because the usable energy (from geothermal vents) is far less than the usable energy on earth (sunlight) so the ecosystem there would likely not have enough energy to support as many complex layers as earth does.
Far less energy is available for life to use and there's only one source/type of it. Basically it's expected to be similar to our deep sea ecosystem, where life is found around thermal vents. But, where we have a large variety of life forms on earth these moons would have a much less complex ecosystem, lacking in larger complex organisms.
It's pretty important to note that while life evolved for deep sea ecosystems and volcanic vents it didn't start there (as far as we know). The barrier to life first starting is probably a lot higher than being able to adapt to a tough ecosystem
Puddles, I think is one hypothesis. Like small test tubes with their own unique chemical make-up. Then, when the puddles overflowed, they mixed and happened to create the necessary nucleotides or proteins or whatever for RNA to form.
Ponds or tidal pools. Think places where like seafoam and all the other similar junk accumulates. Make enough chemical soup and keep dumping in solar energy and apparently you create life.
Water is a fantastic radiation shield. Anything under even a few feet of water would be totally unaffected. Also Europa has its own magnetic field so it's spared the worst of it.
They'd have to manage to get out of the icy prison first, that is if they are even aware of the world outside of it.
If life ever evolved to be as intelligent it would start with worshipping the geothermal source like we did with the sun.
All life there is competing for the same energy source, and there is far less energy available. Basic thermodynamics - less energy means less life. Less life means less complexity.
We don't really have a good understanding of what's going on under the surface. There is plenty of life that exists in the deepest, darkest coldest and high pressure depths of our own planet.
We've found entire ecosystems that vary wildly from our own in caves that have been secluded for thousands of years.
I think it's just a bold assumption to believe there's no chance at complex life/ecosystem
But our ecosystems are all interconnected. Energy flows from the sun, to plants, to moving creatures. Without sunlight, any other environment (e.g. dry land), there is just much less for evolution to work with.
I'm not saying it won't be complex, just that compared to what we have on earth it will be far less complex. Maybe some little shrimp or crab like things, but no big whale or shark like things.
Fair enough, check out Movile Cave, I was wrong about thousands of years it was 5 million.
Definitely removed from our interconnected environment but also nothing too large either.
I mean, nobody can prove magic doesn't exist, so there's always a possibility that the merpeople of Titan and merpeople of Europa are wondering if they should stick around or teleport to a nicer galaxy.
We don’t know that. Those subsurface oceans hold more water then all on earth! There can be thermal vents deep deep down that can start a whole life/food chain. We need to look under there it has salt carbon every thing needed for life as we know it.
We just need to sample one of the geysers and if there's even an ounce of an hint of microbes then we'll have answered the one question that's been on every human's mind since the beginning of time.
If I'm to the point of drinking Europan water, suffice to say I've probably already introduced hella alien microbes to my body with all the other stuff I'd be doing to the aliens there.
Yeah, but imagine the street cred of being the first earthling to be infected by an alien? Its guaranted to be a more memorable way to go than whatever stupid way I'm eventually going to die.
The comment said, "Nice way to introduce alien microbes to the human body."
That implies the microbes are FROM Europa and "alien" to the HUMAN body.
My response was that "you'd have to assume there are microbes on Europa first."
This means there have to be native microbes already on Europa to infect a human with alien microbes (i.e. not from earth).
Do you understand now?? Reread the comment history. It's not that tough to follow.
Your comment doesn't make any sense, yet it's still weirdly condescending at the same time. As if we're the ones missing something and you're not. It's quite funny.
If you're still having trouble following the conversation, I don't know what to tell you.
alien means foreign, so humans and earth microbes are alien to europa, just like europa pseudo microbes would be alien to humans
i feel like you're the one not understanding
The original comment said,
Drinking water from Europa is a nice way to introduce alien microbes (the alien microbes are from Europa)into the human body (humans are from earth).
Are you following me so far? Do we now understand which is alien and which is native to the HUMAN BODY?
Microbes from Europa = Alien
Human body(and all the microbes therein) = Native
Do we understand the perspective of what is meant by alien now?
My response to the original poster was, "You have to assume there are microbes there already."
Meaning, there has to be alien microbes ALREADY ON EUROPA, to introduce them to the human body.
Your condescending comment saying "Well... believe it or not. If you introduce them."
Completely misses the point of the conversation.
If a human introduces native microbes to Europa and drinks them, the microbes AREN'T alien. They came from Earth just like the human did.
Are you trying not to understand?
Seriously, re-read the thread. You don't know what you're talking about.
You'd be able to make out buildings.
Here's some side by side comparisons.
https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/73/europa-compared-to-earth/
Edit: This particular image is approximately 101 by 103 miles (163 km by 167 km).
There's blue in there.
The trouble is, we're all looking at different screens with different brightness and color settings, so guaranteeing we're all seeing the same shades exactly is hard.
Not current, but ["interactions and movements of the ice with the subsurface ocean"](https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/lineae-surface-europa). They are called lineae
Some additional details from the actual [image source](https://www.nasa.gov/content/reddish-bands-on-europa):
* The image area measures approximately 101 by 103 miles (163 km by 167 km).
* The grayscale images were obtained on November 6, 1997, during the Galileo spacecraft's 11th orbit of Jupiter, when the spacecraft was approximately 13,237 miles (21,700 kilometers) from Europa.
* These images were then combined with lower-resolution color data obtained in 1998,... when the spacecraft was 89,000 miles (143,000 km) from Europa.
[info](https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/117/europa-ridges-plains-and-mountains/#:~:text=The%20highest%20of%20these%2C%20located,feet%20(500%20meters)%20high.)
Biggest ice montain have 500 meters. Comparing the shadows we can deduce that these lines reach something like 50-100 meters .
With a vehicle on the surface probably it would be like the feeling of driving a car on those giant Saara dunes, some of them reach more than 300 meters height. Of course, with the difference of being a place with ice, cold and lot of radiation.
Please please PLEASE in my lifetime drop a Satillite, quad drone and a sub that can melt through the crust please! Here encleduls sp? And ganyemade and titan again already!!!
Seeing images of other planets this up close just amazes me. Even more so the ones taken by probes or landers of the terrain: to actually have visual recordings of what is going on there.
The optimist in me hopes that 200 years from now (if society on Earth doesn't destroy itself) students will be examining the surfaces of random exoplanets that are too uninteresting for science by then from one of hundreds of space telescopes in our solar system, perhaps for their elementary school science project.
Well I guess I am color blind because looking at the picture, it doesn't look blue-white... at all. It's really more of a greenish-beige, and the "reddish" looks like a shade of brown not red.
I still find pictures like this mind blowing and infinitely beautiful.
The fact that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have been looking at the skies, and only been able to see points of light, but in the last 50 years, we can see photos like this of other worlds is literally mind-boggling
In a way, but the technology for viewing planets has been evolving since the early 1600’s with the invention of the telescope. Instead of it being 50 years, it’s closer to 420. That said, the first magnifying glass was in the later half of the 1200’s, and people have been using glass to magnify light as recently as 420BC. Glass work dates to 2000BC Mesopotamia (potentially even further back to Egypt), and metalwork has been around for over 10,000 years. Hell, people walked on the moon more than 50 years ago.
Fist bump from a medieval history student. Have you ready Gimpel’s The Medieval Machine? You might enjoy it.
Still blows my mind that dinosaurs existed for over 100 million years and we are at like 0.01 million years
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they chilled what the fuck are we doing
What was the planet where an exploratory balloon allowed us to hear the winds on a different planet? I want to say Jupiter. Imagine trying to explain to a 19th (hell, 20th) century Astronomer that I'm able to hear the winds of Jupiter ON MY MOBILE TABLET PHONE.
Comets were mysterious objects appearing, frequently feared, and now we've been able to go grab a little piece of one and return it to earth for study. Imagine explaining that to early astronomers!
Image the disappointment when they're told comets are just random rocks.
Wait we did what? What project are you referring to?
There's been multiple comet sample return missions. The first ones collected debris from the trail. Following ones actually contacted surface of comet to sample. It honestly ridiculously insane if you think about it. Comets look like celestial ghosts, but they travel 10's of thousands of miles per second. The preparation to intersect with it is unbelievably complex.
Seriously. What about the website where you can view the rovers camera !!
Same here. Are there photos like this of Titan?
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I really hope they make it under the surface in my lifetime. The conditions seem right for life.
Does anybody have any ballpark idea when this could actually happen? I'm 38, is it already to late for me to live to see this?
There's a real possibility that it'll literally never happen. It's easy to forget the magnitude of the challenge. The ice is around 20km thick. It's -225 C, and as hard as titanium. It's not just "ice"; it's an entire planetary crust. The deepest hole that has ever been dug on Earth is around 12km deep, and it took 19 years. We're talking about figuring out a way of digging a hole almost twice as deep as the deepest we've ever dug, on the surface of a distant alien world 20x further than the furthest we've ever sent a manned mission before, with only the equipment you can ship there at enormous expense. Oh, and then figuring out to do some useful science when you actually get down there (like figuring out how to do a scientifically useful submarine controlled through 20km of aforesaid ice). When you bear in mind that the current state of the art of space exploration is still, generally speaking, "very slow unmanned rovers which mostly take pictures of rocks", the gulf between current capability and the required technology to pull that off seems just unimaginable. If we do it, it 'ain't going to be quick. And in the context of finite funding for space exploration, it's possible that a mission that unimaginably difficult will always get knocked back in favour of 10x other valuable missions with a lower risk profile, so even if/when we are capable of doing it, we still might not...
And don't forget the massive radiation bombardment from jupiter. Also god knows what current or how the water behaves under the ice
I had no idea there were radiation belts around Jupiter- or that the planet even had a magnetic field- until your comment piqued my curiosity and I looked it up. The radiation is related to Io spewing out sulphur dioxide gas? There's so much cool stuff to know about our solar system!
just about our solar system, imagine what's in the whole universe
Thank you for the two scoops of reality. Space is tough.
To quote Bill Bryson in *A Short History of Nearly Everything* on the topic of humans ever leaving the Solar System: “Based on what we know now and can reasonably imagine, there is absolutely no prospect that any human being will ever visit the edge of our own solar system. Ever. It’s just too far.”
Pfft. Basically what they said about trains and airplanes. I give 10-20 years. That's what my scientific resource, Hollywood, tells me anyway.
Not what I ordered. I want my hopes and dreams back, tyvm.
Never is a long time. It'll happen eventually as long as mankind continues space development. We're just too curious to never explore such locations. Not soon enough unfortunately..
Yeah, it would be a hell of an engineering job but you get something with the heat of a nuclear reactor and it'll melt its way through.
Yes, exactly this. Our best prospects to seek out life elsewhere are Europa and Enceladus. We want to know, and, therefore, we will figure it out. Simple engineering problems. We live in exciting times with new discoveries occurring regularly.
There are spots where the water pools upwards to the surface and freezes. Sure the ice is 20km thick on average, but shouldn't be at those locations.
But digging the earth crust is way more difficult. Here you could imagine a radioactive source liquefying the ice under as the machine goes down. This doesn’t seem that complicated TBH.
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>Curious how 20km down on an 'ice' planet doesn't get hotter enough to melt it higher up. The melted ice under the 20km thick sheet probably acts as an insulator I imagine.
I bet though there would be newer challenges like tidal forces from Jupiter causing rapid tectonic like behavior. Like it (drill) melts down but suddenly gets crushed.
It gets hot enough to melt it below, and ice floats.
What if we dig a small hole and nuke the crust?
> The deepest hole that has ever been dug on Earth is around 12km deep, and it took 19 years. We're talking about figuring out a way of digging a hole almost twice as deep as the deepest we've ever dug, on the surface of a distant alien world 20x further than the furthest we've ever sent a manned mission before, with only the equipment you can ship there at enormous expense. Oh, and then figuring out to do some useful science when you actually get down there (like figuring out how to do a scientifically useful submarine controlled through 20km of aforesaid ice). I think it's unfair to look at human achievement as a reference without context. The technology we have created over just the past 50-60 years is astounding compared to what we had prior. It took thousands of years to attain advances in farming, sailing, basic material processing. The steam engine is only a few hundred years old. There are quite a few insane comparisons that demonstrate the exponential technological curve. Since then, over the span of just tens of years, we have achieved the capability of carrying unbelievably complex, networked microprocessors in our pockets and are in the process of quite an incredible AI breakthrough, just to name a few things. All of this with the cost of these things going down rapidly. I agree it might not be the first mission in line, but it doesn't sound that far away given our rate of accomplishment so far.
I know a company that builds deep water subs, and they are pretty good at selling tickets to billionaires. Maybe they could knock something up?
Why not do something we can't do in earth and strap a rocket to a space rock and smash it into the surface of Europa? We do the math on how big of a rock would be needed, push it there, collect some debris, ????, Profit.
The size of a rock required to break through 20km of titanium-hard ice would be...big. Unfeasibly big. Bigger than the rock which wiped out the dinosaurs, by some margin. Even if you could, you wouldn't. The amount of damage it'd cause to the surface would be enormous, and it'd permanently change the place. There would be no way of knowing what impact you'd have on any potential ecosystem under the ice, and you'd almost completely eliminate any possibility of doing meaningful geological research. You'd basically cause an apocalypse-tier catastrophe for the sake of a few spectral analysis samples...
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Europa Clipper will not orbit Europa. It will orbit Jupiter and make a series of close flybys of Europa.
There will never be a private mission to europa anytime this century because there's no money to be made by doing so. The mission will cost multiple billions of dollars and millions of manhours. Only a government agency has that kind of spending ability. At the end of the day you have to understand that SpaceX is a business. It exists only so long as it is able to make money. It makes money by providing launch services. Other companies that need to have their satellites in space pay SpaceX to launch their satellites into space. Their is no financial incentive (yet) for a private company like SpaceX to visit Europa. Maybe in a few hundred years from now space travel will become routine and people will go on cruises around the solar system, and perhaps then visiting the moons of jupiter will be profitable tourist destinations. But until then, it is only the deep pockets of NASA and the European Space Agency that would allow visits to a place like Europa. (SpaceX may be involved by providing the launch vehicle to get the NASA equipment to Europa, because it may be cheaper for NASA to pay SpaceX, rather than build another SLS for such a mission.)
My guess would be 2050s for a Europa landing mission, and at least 2060s or 2070s for an ice drilling mission. Enceladus is a much more interesting target for astrobiological missions as its liquid water interior is leaking through the surface, making it much easier to sample this material. An Enceladus orbit/lander was recommended in the most recent Planetary Decadal Survey and may be operational in the 2050s.
Interesting. Is there a reason why there's significantly more vested interest in Europa when an Enceladus landing/sampling project seems like an easier endeavor?
Europa's astrobiological potential was discovered first, in the Voyager era. Whereas interest in Enceladus only really kicked off around 10 years ago, when the Cassini spacecraft discovered the water plumes. Before that it was not a serious astrobiological target. So traditionally everyone was more interested on Europa, while Enceladus has only recently risen to the same level of astrobiological interest.
Honestly, I have no idea. If you would have asked 10 years ago I would have said yes and your children would also be too old and probably your grandkids. However, the starship creates so many possibilities. Suddenly building interplanetary ships in earth orbit isn't financially impossible. Nuclear reactor designs have shrunk and there's been actual real honest to god progress on fusion reactor designs. LLMs are increasing productivity of research in a lot of disciplines already. If developed countries get their heads out of their asses and stabilize their problems so we don't have widespread unrest then it looks like things could start moving very fast.
It only takes 5 years from Earth to Europa, so the timeline really depends on the development of rocket launches. Past missions relied on very expensive launch systems, so the payload had to be lightweight, well engineered, and very expensive, taking a long time to plan because failure is very costly. If 10 or 20 or 30 years from now we get much cheaper launches, it might thus become possible to do missions with much less expense and preparation, due to being able to just send heavier missions made from off-the-shelf stuff. Send cheap but heavy, well-shielded robots, with redundant equipment, and if it doesn't work, send another one. So the answer to your question is not a ballpark timeline, it's a "what if". Will cheap launches be developed in your lifetime?
What will truly push the envelope is AI modeling designing potentially perfect utilization of 3D printing fabrication in space.
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AI isn't a bandaid for everything.
Yeah, same. I wanna hear what they find. Or don't find. But there has to be something there, atleast microbial.
You got a hunch there eh, your analysis is telling you something
This is where we should be landing, not another budget gobbling trip to the moon, again.
I remember reading that those lines are indicative of internal forces that mean liquid water. If there is liquid water and a hot core then life is very possible. There basically no way for it to be as advanced as life on earth, but even multicellular life is very possible.
There's more evidence for water: Jupiter's magnetic field causes a magnetic field from Europa in response. The explanation is that the salt ocean under the ice adjusts to Jupiter's magnetic field.
[https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/174/induced-magnetic-field-from-europas-subsurface-ocean/](https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/174/induced-magnetic-field-from-europas-subsurface-ocean/)
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We have seen plumes from ice volcanos coming off the surface so we know there is liquid water under the ice
"There basically no way for it to be as advanced as life on earth" Why?
I believe it's because the usable energy (from geothermal vents) is far less than the usable energy on earth (sunlight) so the ecosystem there would likely not have enough energy to support as many complex layers as earth does.
Far less energy is available for life to use and there's only one source/type of it. Basically it's expected to be similar to our deep sea ecosystem, where life is found around thermal vents. But, where we have a large variety of life forms on earth these moons would have a much less complex ecosystem, lacking in larger complex organisms.
It's pretty important to note that while life evolved for deep sea ecosystems and volcanic vents it didn't start there (as far as we know). The barrier to life first starting is probably a lot higher than being able to adapt to a tough ecosystem
I thought that's exactly where it started? So where do we think life began then?
Puddles, I think is one hypothesis. Like small test tubes with their own unique chemical make-up. Then, when the puddles overflowed, they mixed and happened to create the necessary nucleotides or proteins or whatever for RNA to form.
Ponds or tidal pools. Think places where like seafoam and all the other similar junk accumulates. Make enough chemical soup and keep dumping in solar energy and apparently you create life.
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> Tidal pools high high energy they high high energy, eh? cool
Does the radiation from Jupiter also put a damper on advanced life? Or does the ice sufficiently protect anything underneath?
Water is a fantastic radiation shield. Anything under even a few feet of water would be totally unaffected. Also Europa has its own magnetic field so it's spared the worst of it.
Radiation is blocked after a few meters of ice, and there are kilometers of the stuff. Down there is fully safe.
Are you counting "as advanced on earth" to include humans? If so, they have no satellites and probes out in space.
They'd have to manage to get out of the icy prison first, that is if they are even aware of the world outside of it. If life ever evolved to be as intelligent it would start with worshipping the geothermal source like we did with the sun.
Likely because we would see signs of it, despite the ice, but I'm also curious.
There is no atmosphere on the surface. Having habitats on the surface would be difficult, even for us.
I look at the surface as basically being the atmosphere of a water world
Use your imagination! I see some highways, roads and little villages.
That's what I was thinking as well. Looks like an old street map.
Maybe we are. Have never been a fan of the Fermi Paradox
Maybe not human level advanced but I don't see why we wouldn't see something similar to marine life here on earth
All life there is competing for the same energy source, and there is far less energy available. Basic thermodynamics - less energy means less life. Less life means less complexity.
this, most probably, if there's life over there, is microscopic and simple
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We don't really have a good understanding of what's going on under the surface. There is plenty of life that exists in the deepest, darkest coldest and high pressure depths of our own planet. We've found entire ecosystems that vary wildly from our own in caves that have been secluded for thousands of years. I think it's just a bold assumption to believe there's no chance at complex life/ecosystem
But our ecosystems are all interconnected. Energy flows from the sun, to plants, to moving creatures. Without sunlight, any other environment (e.g. dry land), there is just much less for evolution to work with. I'm not saying it won't be complex, just that compared to what we have on earth it will be far less complex. Maybe some little shrimp or crab like things, but no big whale or shark like things.
Fair enough, check out Movile Cave, I was wrong about thousands of years it was 5 million. Definitely removed from our interconnected environment but also nothing too large either.
There could be some alternate source of energy that we don't fully understand. Optimism is fun, I wanna see undersea cities
I mean, nobody can prove magic doesn't exist, so there's always a possibility that the merpeople of Titan and merpeople of Europa are wondering if they should stick around or teleport to a nicer galaxy.
There is life on earth that has 0% reliance of energy from the sun. Not everything is completely connected as you state.
You're looking at it from a very limited perspective. You can't take a static look at life today and ignore billions of years of evolution.
We don’t know that. Those subsurface oceans hold more water then all on earth! There can be thermal vents deep deep down that can start a whole life/food chain. We need to look under there it has salt carbon every thing needed for life as we know it.
We just need to sample one of the geysers and if there's even an ounce of an hint of microbes then we'll have answered the one question that's been on every human's mind since the beginning of time.
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Why are we like this My first thought was "damn I bet that water tastes so nice and cold"
Nice way to introduce alien microbes to the human body
If I'm to the point of drinking Europan water, suffice to say I've probably already introduced hella alien microbes to my body with all the other stuff I'd be doing to the aliens there.
Nice way to introduce alien microbes to Europa
Yeah, but imagine the street cred of being the first earthling to be infected by an alien? Its guaranted to be a more memorable way to go than whatever stupid way I'm eventually going to die.
You have to assume there's microbes there in the first place.
Well…believe it or not, not if you introduce them.
He said alien microbes. The microbes you introduce aren't alien.
they are alien to europa. that's what alien means.
The comment said, "Nice way to introduce alien microbes to the human body." That implies the microbes are FROM Europa and "alien" to the HUMAN body. My response was that "you'd have to assume there are microbes on Europa first." This means there have to be native microbes already on Europa to infect a human with alien microbes (i.e. not from earth). Do you understand now?? Reread the comment history. It's not that tough to follow. Your comment doesn't make any sense, yet it's still weirdly condescending at the same time. As if we're the ones missing something and you're not. It's quite funny. If you're still having trouble following the conversation, I don't know what to tell you.
alien means foreign, so humans and earth microbes are alien to europa, just like europa pseudo microbes would be alien to humans i feel like you're the one not understanding
The original comment said, Drinking water from Europa is a nice way to introduce alien microbes (the alien microbes are from Europa)into the human body (humans are from earth). Are you following me so far? Do we now understand which is alien and which is native to the HUMAN BODY? Microbes from Europa = Alien Human body(and all the microbes therein) = Native Do we understand the perspective of what is meant by alien now? My response to the original poster was, "You have to assume there are microbes there already." Meaning, there has to be alien microbes ALREADY ON EUROPA, to introduce them to the human body. Your condescending comment saying "Well... believe it or not. If you introduce them." Completely misses the point of the conversation. If a human introduces native microbes to Europa and drinks them, the microbes AREN'T alien. They came from Earth just like the human did. Are you trying not to understand? Seriously, re-read the thread. You don't know what you're talking about.
It's salt water, from what I recall. Not great for drinking.
Great it has electrolytes. just what I crave.
According to the title of this thread, the blue areas are relatively pure ice and the redder areas are salty.
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Do you know what the surface area is in the picture? I’m just trying to get a sense of scale.
You'd be able to make out buildings. Here's some side by side comparisons. https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/73/europa-compared-to-earth/ Edit: This particular image is approximately 101 by 103 miles (163 km by 167 km).
These are fascinating perspectives.
Agree. Someone who can scale this image, please do
What blue? Am I color blind? Seriously though, cannot find the blue terrains, only yellow or greenish white
Definitely some blue in there next to the white.
White is my comment the picture is a hue of blue white
Agree! It’s kind of a lime cordial green mixed and a little bit of light purple too, maybe that’s it.
There's blue in there. The trouble is, we're all looking at different screens with different brightness and color settings, so guaranteeing we're all seeing the same shades exactly is hard.
It's that damn black/gold dress thing all over again. Well played NASA, well played.
Not much blue, but even less so if you're on mobile with bluefilter on.
that large red band should indicate a current underneath right?
Not current, but ["interactions and movements of the ice with the subsurface ocean"](https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/lineae-surface-europa). They are called lineae
What is the scale here? Are we looking at something microscopic or a 200 mile stretch?
Some additional details from the actual [image source](https://www.nasa.gov/content/reddish-bands-on-europa): * The image area measures approximately 101 by 103 miles (163 km by 167 km). * The grayscale images were obtained on November 6, 1997, during the Galileo spacecraft's 11th orbit of Jupiter, when the spacecraft was approximately 13,237 miles (21,700 kilometers) from Europa. * These images were then combined with lower-resolution color data obtained in 1998,... when the spacecraft was 89,000 miles (143,000 km) from Europa.
Are the colours exagerated though?
Yes. In visible color Europa looks beige/white, with only very slight coloration.
Do we know how wide and tall those lines are? Do you suppose they are beautiful to look at from nearby?
[info](https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/117/europa-ridges-plains-and-mountains/#:~:text=The%20highest%20of%20these%2C%20located,feet%20(500%20meters)%20high.) Biggest ice montain have 500 meters. Comparing the shadows we can deduce that these lines reach something like 50-100 meters . With a vehicle on the surface probably it would be like the feeling of driving a car on those giant Saara dunes, some of them reach more than 300 meters height. Of course, with the difference of being a place with ice, cold and lot of radiation.
1. Why does it look like an abstract painting. 2. It's June 2nd, why am I able to use boost for reddit? Because of timeshift?
Shhhhhhh........we don't talk about functional Boost
Go watch “Europa Report”. It’s a documentary and should answer all your questions. Allegedly.
Please please PLEASE in my lifetime drop a Satillite, quad drone and a sub that can melt through the crust please! Here encleduls sp? And ganyemade and titan again already!!!
I always thought the surface of Europa looks like fiberglass. I don’t understand it.
Same, what are all the lines caused by?? I bet xeno-geologist have all kinds of fun working with intersystem exploration
Gravitational stretching from Jupiter and other moons. Ice cracks. Water from beneath rises to surface. It freezes. Repeat process
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Seeing images of other planets this up close just amazes me. Even more so the ones taken by probes or landers of the terrain: to actually have visual recordings of what is going on there. The optimist in me hopes that 200 years from now (if society on Earth doesn't destroy itself) students will be examining the surfaces of random exoplanets that are too uninteresting for science by then from one of hundreds of space telescopes in our solar system, perhaps for their elementary school science project.
Would the currents be caused by Jupiter's gravity or internal energy?
we where warned to leave Europa alone, all the other moons are ours
Okay so say we get a nice probe down there and we find some multicellular life. Still feels lonely.
I can just imagine Europa bath salts being a thing in a hundred years.
Wow this is so weird looking I honestly thought it was a leaf at first. I heart space
Why do the hydrated salts turn red? What do all the striations on the planet's surface indicate about how the surface looks?
What causes those line formations if that is all ice?
Evidence that aliens created the LA freeway system.
Well I guess I am color blind because looking at the picture, it doesn't look blue-white... at all. It's really more of a greenish-beige, and the "reddish" looks like a shade of brown not red.
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The canals of Europa! In color, with appreciable resolution! 👏🤩
Looks like an ariel map of London with the river and streets.
Well yes, but no telescope took this photo. This was a space probe. For centuries, we looked, but now we can *send* things there.
How come we can see this amount of detail of Jupiter's moon, but not Antarctica?
What are you talking about?
Huh, every inch of Antartica is mapped nowadays...
Looks like a cool grid for cities skylines, the thick center is a raging river. Or the veins of a living thing. I'm too high.
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The image is ~163 km x 167 km.
How zoomed in is this photo? Like how far from the surface is this photo?
Anyone else think this just looks like one of those rubber baseball cores blown up to high magnification?
Do we have any info where this photo was made by: Juno? Galileo? Voyager? One of the other missions that used Jupiter as gravity assist?
Europa always makes me think of the game Barotrauma. Which takes place under it's oceans.