From the “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE” department.
NASA to Hold Media Call on Evidence of Surprising Activity on Europa
NASA will host a teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 26, to present new findings from images captured by the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.
Astronomers will present results from a unique Europa observing campaign that resulted in surprising evidence of activity that may be related to the presence of a subsurface ocean on Europa. Participants in the teleconference will be:
- Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington
- William Sparks, astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore
- Britney Schmidt, assistant professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta
- Jennifer Wiseman, senior Hubble project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
To participate by phone, media must contact Dwayne Brown at 202-358-1726 or dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov and provide their media affiliation no later than noon Monday.
Audio of the teleconference will stream live on NASA’s website at:
For information about NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, visit:
-end-
“Astronomers will present results from a unique Europa observing campaign that resulted in surprising evidence of activity that may be related to the presence of a subsurface ocean on Europa,”
That gives a wide latitude, it could mean anything from discovering plate tectonics like we have on Earth, to discovering what looks like algal type blooms that discolor sections of the frozen ocean based on seasonal changes.
Astrobiologists have long regarded Europa as one of the solar system’s best bets to host alien life. So did Arthur C. Clarke in his followup story to 2001, A space Odyssey with 2010: Odyssey Two, which is where that famous “attempt no landing there” phrase comes from. Europa is a 1,900-mile-wide (3,100 kilometers) moon of Jupiter that apparently holds a huge ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell; furthermore, astronomers think this ocean is in contact with Europa’s rocky mantle, making possible all sorts of interesting chemical reactions that could create life, much like what we witness near deep sea hydrothermal vents in Earth’s oceans.
What is most interesting is that the scientists that run the JUNO probe don’t want to let it crash land there like has been done on so many other moons and planets. They don’t want to risk it contaminating the moon.
NASA did say this in response to some outlandish speculation:
Monday, we’ll announce new findings from Jupiter’s moon Europa. Spoiler alert: NOT aliens: https://t.co/3IHT9H9Idp pic.twitter.com/11lHwsDzvv
— NASA (@NASA) September 21, 2016
We’ll be watching with great interest.
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..Whats wrong with just a good old fashioned Press Conference ? And why wait till Monday ?
build suspense. … drum-roll ….. TADA !!
Probably going to be flop rather than big news.
BTW, I don’t know what this was supposed to mean:
From the “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE” department.
There is a very good reason for not touching Europa if we suspect there maybe some form of life there since it would pretty much nullify any findings if we contaminate it first. Like the lake under Vostck in Antarctica.
@Greg: This was a cultural reference you seem to have missed.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 version of “2001: A Space Odyssey” became famous with its image of monkeys dancing in front of an alien monolith while “Also Sprach Zarathustra” fills any mental voids with tympanic reverberation. However the “ATTEMPT NO LANDING” quotation comes from the sequel, “2010: Odyssey Two,” where a follow-up expedition heads out to the Jovian system to figure out what happened to Dave & the HAL9000 those many years before.
Of the two films, I find “2010” to be nearly as pretty & far easier to watch than “2001,” even given its dated nature (filmed in the late 1980s to depict an era 25 years later). Also, one doesn’t NEED to see the first to enjoy the second, as it stands alone fairly well. I understand this is probably heresy, and accept that all the Internet’s pitchforks & torches, tar & feathers will shortly be following their optimal ballistic intercept trajectories with my own current vector…. now-ish. ^_^
I evoke my inner Arthur C Clark and predict NASA is going to announce “Something Wonderful”
Perhaps they’ve found a monolith on Europa
“We’ll be watching with great interest.”
No we won’t. They’re just making shit up as they go.
Apes, not monkeys with the monolith.
(Gabro said we’re fish, dinos are birds, but; apes not monkeys ; )
My immediate thought too. If they’ve got something why not just announce it.
Stanley Kubrick can burn in Hades as far as I am concerned for destroying forever, that marvelous Tone Poem by Richard Strauss.
Just as Walt Dismal, and Leopold Stokowski murdered Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, as well as J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor, in Fantasia. Well that movie was a disaster for all of the pieces of music it featured.
G
Have to justify the budget somehow.
Fri. Sept 23rd 2016
What surprising news ??
I read all about that yesterday on WUWT.
Europa Seas are so yesterday !
g
I read a
More seriously;
If my memory serves me correctly, a pseudo weirdo guy by the name of Richard C. Hoagland; or close to that, proposed YEARS ago, that Europa might have liquid ocean underneath its ice, and that NASA should consider sending probes there.
As far as I know, NASA has never acknowledged the origin of that idea.
Hoagland used to be a regular on the Art Bell late night radio program, which eventually morphed into the George Noori program.
Hoagland was always talking about some total BS stuff he called “Hyper Dimensional Physics” and what problems he has solved using that; but so far as I know he never ever published any papers on any examples of his HDP calculations of anything.
He also had some fetish about 19.something degrees, as in a Latitude of something somewhere; or more often about everything that popped up at 19.something latitude.
And I believe that there is a published paper from him on his Europa liquid oceans postulate, that dates back to when he first proposed the idea.
I always thought he was a kook, somewhat in the Mucho Kookoa vein; but then there was his Europa liquid Oceans suggestion offsetting that.
G
@ur momisugly george, re Hoagland: Just because an idea originates with a crackpot doesn’t necessarily mean the idea itself is crackpotty.
Copernicus was a crackpot (obsessed with restoring the “perfection” of circular movement to Heaven, the physics be damned) who just happened to be right . . . or, well, to have a more workable model.
“””””…..
george e. smith
September 22, 2016 at 9:03 am
More seriously; …..”””””
So where did I say it was a crackpot idea ??
I was noting simply that Hoagland should be credited with having first proposed this idea, and being roundly ignored.
Yes I think he is nutty; but he wrote a serious paper describing his theory, and they just thumbed their noses at him.
I don’t; and I still think he is nutty.
G
Since one of NASA’s primary missions now is “Muslim outreach”, maybe they’re still translating the texts? Not easy, must be sensitive to Muslim sensibilities, and politically correct, you know.
NASA: We found those missing and deleted Emails…
+1000 😀
The water vapor fountains are old wood, now. NASA have to come up with something really SURPRISING now. My bet is one of three possibilities:
1) Organic compounds in the vapor jets, for example CO2, CH4, C2H6, and PAH
2) Non-organic compounds, like for example: NH, NaCl, etc
3) Metallic compounds, like Cu, Zn, Fe, etc
Why? Yes, because there is also heat inside this globe, induced by tidal forces, and that means hydrothermal activity, where these compounds are produced – also on Earth, Titan, etc.
Lets get the popcorn out for the big event….
The last time NASA did this it was a massive disappointment
NOPE,
The something wonderful news were just that, water vapor fountains.
http://gizmodo.com/hubble-discovers-new-evidence-of-geyser-activity-on-eur-1787081944
They found the missing heat in the oceans… of Europa.
That’s interesting and all, but this being Watts up With That I automatically thought about headlines next week being something like “Global Warming is Melting Europa’s Icy Crust”. =)
If they report evidence of melting on Hillary’s icy crust, now THAT would be news!
It’s ice all the way down with that one.
That would actually be an interesting result for skeptics. If similar warming is observed on Europa as was seen on Mars and Earth than there is no way man is causing the majority of the warming. Case closed at that point. (note that we still may be contributing some amount – the data will not be good enough to show long term trends mirroring ours so can not be used to eliminate possible human contribution.)
Mars is not warming. The sun is in a cool phase… Really I thought the ‘it’s warming on other planets meme was dead?
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm
Griff,
I would think that “skeptical science” as a credible source is a real damage to me reading anything you have to type in the future. They have been shown to be pure propaganda.
The earth isn’t warming either, at least not in the last 20 years.
Owen, to a true believer like Griff, propaganda is determined by whether or not it advances the cause.
when ppl link to sks I get up from my PC and wash my hands and face
IIRR, the outer planets have already shown global warming similar to the earth. NASA and the usual suspects had to do quite a tap dance to explain how that could happen without CO2 emissions.
Good name Stone Rabbit
In view of our political and social situation here in the US….BEAM ME UP!
NASA actually doing space research? I thought they were now doing global warming and Muslim outreach!/sarc
Big jump from algae to life is easy just as it’s a big jump to think it’s independent from Earth. Who’s to say some big rock blown off of the Earth did not already contaminate Europa?
Btw, how deep would that deadly radiation penetrate the ice and possible water on Europa? If I recall, water is a big time stopper of various types of radiation.
A half value layer for water is about 8 inches… Could be less or could be more depending on the type of radiation and energy, there are several factors involved but, 8 inches is a good rule of thumb. It takes about 5 half value layers to stop 99%+ of radiation. So, you would need about 40 inches of water… Give or take a little bit.
And Ice?
About 8 inches for the half value layer, maybe slightly more.
Ice doesn’t work quite as well as a radiation shield, but liquid water is exceptional; even with NO surface ice on Europa, the hard radiation of space AND the radiation of the massive Jovian magnetic fields would be damped to Earth sea-level norms within just a few meters of the surface, as SMC previously indicated.
This is why on-site nuclear reactor waste is stored in containment pools: (with permission from all the guys with guns guarding the place, of course!) you would likely get a lower dose of radiation swimming in the upper layers of such a pool than you do just walking outside.
Research reactors are often Pool Type, the guts just sit on the bottom of a swimming pool like tub… and you can look down through the water when they are operating… Containment? We don’t need no steenking containment! !! Or shielding beyond the water.
What deadly radiation ??
G
@george e. smith, who said: “What deadly radiation ??”
George, just as Earth has an active magnetic field, and thus belts of charged particles (the Van Allen belts), Jupiter has a much larger, more powerful magnetic field, one which would appear almost five times the size of the full moon in our sky (assuming we could see it, of course). Anyone standing/landing/living on the surface of any of the Galilean moons will have to shield against this somehow if they wish not to cook like a fried egg, and quickly! This is why we were mentioning the shielding capability of Europa’s (possible) ocean.
Deadly Orgone Radiation
[As opposed to the Deadly Orange Refrigerators of the late 1960’s? …mod]
As eukaryotes, algae, such as seaweed, are actually a quite complicated form of life, the ancestors of plants.
Hubble has been studying Europa for quite some time.
The Red Streaks are probably salts from the liquid ocean beneath the icy crust, not algae, however, as some have speculated:
http://sen.com/news/scientists-recreate-europa-s-crust
Hubble detected what appeared to be water vapor jets shooting from Europa in 2013:
http://sen.com/news/scientists-find-evidence-of-water-plumes-erupting-on-europa
Water vapor had previously been observed erupting from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
What? The red streaks aren’t SUV tracks?
Spoiler alert: NOT aliens:
In related news, Donald Trump expressed relief that there were no aliens discovered on Europa. Something about no having to build another wall…
In other other news, Hillary expressed dismay at the news there were no Aliens on Europa. “There’s hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled to Europe,” she said. “What suddenly happened to them? I have a very stern message that I have left for Ms Merkel and other leaders, this just isn’t acceptable.”
If they really could get to Europa then both the European Space Agency and NASA would be falling over themselves to offer them jobs!
Not aliens you say, David?
That Fed-ex delivery person is going to be really PO’d when they get to Europa to deliver that t-shirt!
What? They spotted an alien with a “Deplorable” t-shirt?
I suppose that would be page-4 newsworthy.
Take us to your leader. …. What? A short-timer, a blowhard and a dying grandmother? You don’t say. …. Okay, how about this Rasputin guy, he controls a big chunk, right? …. Oh, he bombed a humanitarian convoy, and he’ll embarrass us, you say? …. Okay, how about this Britain country? …. NO? …. Okay, what’s this European Union thing? …. Oh, that’s disappointing. …. Okay, new plan, take us to these Dave and Buster guys.
Pop Science is Tabloid Science.
Click-bait. Professional Wrestling Science. InfoAintTainment.
Hyped and boring TV.
I hate it.
Andrew
Nice way to build up hype, speculation and anticipation. Hopefully the announcement lives up to, or at least is somewhere in the ballpark, people’s expectations.
Polar bear activity, responsible for resupplying the polar bear population on Earth, but now their polar bear supply is running out and it’s worse than we thought.
Nothing NASA could say would surprise me.
Nothing there …. all the way to humanity came from there….to we’ve already been there…. to super advanced super beings vacation there.
Nothing will surprise me.
What might surprise me is if NASA DOESN’T ask for more money to mount an expedition to go there.
no bucks, no buck rogers…
So, if bucks are required for Buck Rogers, what do I need for Ming the Merciless?
Moolah.
I am reminded of Dr. Svalgaard’s award from NASA for “mesmerizing the public”.
NASA is going ahead with planning for a mission to Europa in the next decade, with the ESA getting in on funding action as well.
Hubble observations help keep up the drum beat for bucks and Euros:
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/all-systems-go-for-nasas-mission-to-jupiter-moon-europa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Multiple-Flyby_Mission
http://www.space.com/32995-jupiter-moon-europa-energy-life.html
“. . . nothing NASA could say would surprise me . . . ”
Actually, nothing NASA could say would make me believe it prima facia. Except, perhaps, it’s another lie. But, scientific minds terrible things to waste. They help move the planet’s thoughts forward . . . going where no minds have ever gone. (The moon comes to mind, so to speak.) Discovering things like The New Planet of late. Possibly with water. Like their Mars meteorite rocks that “. . . indicated traces of water.” Like their moon rock samples they sent to—Sweden, was it?—that turned out to be petrified wood. Who knew? But The New Planet is different. They haven’t laid eyes on it yet but, it’s there. Behind another planet. They know. From the planet’s mathematical wobbles that are probably caused by the sloshing of its oceans that are caused by the planet’s wobb . . .
http://oi68.tinypic.com/33usv2u.jpg
The Monolith!!
Perhaps the announcement will be that they have observed “climate change” on Europa. It will be speculated that the Europans have been burning too much methane, causing climate change. Their own version of subversive control by deception, the Europan Union will be asked to curb emissions and forgo personal freedoms to combat “climate change” on Europa.
Dang. Was looking for something really really profound. Water under ice? Oh well.
It is still interesting that we’ve developed technology to detect such a thing. If that’s all it is.
Yeti’s home world would have been more fun. With maybe, a Corey Feldman fan club.
Europa is electrical like Rosetta… There are surface discharges that excavate material.
Europa
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/405760main_cassini20091121-b-full.jpg
Rosetta
http://sen.com/thumbs/1024×576/img/14146802751414681152.jpg
I am sure I will see the resemblance when I get stoned. Till then it is still Greek to me.
brantc, whoever photo-shopped those building-shadows on the Europa pic would’ve be more convincing if they had softened the edges just a little bit….
OK, looking more closely, maybe those “building shadows” are just artifacts of the processing or data-stream.
OK, wild speculation time. What can Hubble discern about Europa that could betray the behaviour of the supposed ocean? The only thing I can think of is anomalous nutation about its synchronous rotational period i.e. anomalous drag and acceleration from the ocean slopping. I haven’t a clue whether Hubble can see Europa clearly enough to discern this.
Water plumes spouting through the ice, like geysers. But this has already been observed and reported.
If there have been water spouts then crashing the probe into it should be fine & who knows, we may be letting The Great A’Tuins child free from it’s tough eggshell 😉
Just worked out that the surface rotates about 0.6 m/sec faster at periapsis than at apoapsis so, not much difference. Being only a few percent of the mass, the slosh n drag would add just a few seconds and maybe a km or so of delay on equatorial rotation (informed guess based on absolute upper limit).
You know the punters love all this alien life stuff. Should put another zero on the end of that check. (And remember, no bloody emails saying we can’t find alien life and it’s a travesty we can’t!)
Totally tongue-in-cheek, I’ll bet it’s worse than we thought.
Repent for the end is nigh, NASA is going announce!! 😄
Like Brexit.
Perhaps Europa is responding to the Leave campaign, or simply warming.
They have built up too much expectation.
When the news is released, it is bound to be anti climax, just as their last staged press conference was.
If NASA really had astounding info, they would not tease the world about it.
It would leak!
Can anyone NOT imagine staffer selling info on “discovery of alien life” to “the media” for 10 million bucks?
For some unknown reason your post has inspired me. NASA has discovered Sea Monkeys on Europa. They look exactly like they do in the advertisements in the comic books.
One sad excuse for a NASA staffer tried to get money by leaking the information to the media but they laughed her out of the office.
Those Sea Monkeys remind me of Elaine Morgan’s aquatic ape-humans.
Are you sure they aren’t mermaids?
They’re real, I tell ya. We caught one making the turn ’round South America for Australia. Keel-hauled him but the sucker wouldn”t talk. Finally tossed him overboard.
I just hope the news from NASA is a bit more exciting than Geraldo Rivera’s two-hour special when he opened Al Capone’s empty vault.
So the idea might be that it actually “snowballed” (unlike earth), including gasses that do not freeze on earth; and its “crust” might be something akin to a frozen atmosphere. The Siliceous material we think of as rock would be the “mantle”, isolated and insulated and capable of imponderable outbursts…
Cool stuff.
Europa actually does have a tenuous to wispy atmosphere of oxygen, produced radio-chemically rather than biologically, as on earth.
O2, I presume. How do you produce this radio-chemically?
@gymnosperm: Hard radiation fractures water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, hydrogen escapes, and Bob’s your uncle.
Correctamundo.
And its apparent internal ocean, once thought too acidic for life, has recently been shown experimentally to be hospitable. The announcement might have something to do with observations supporting that result.
Basically like the lakes beneath the ice on Antarctica. No idea the pH of those lakes, but don’t they have fish?
Yup. Subglacial fish.
But of course on earth the fish didn’t need to evolve under ice.
Just shows that animals, ie motile, O2-burning heterotrophs, can exist in such an environment.
Gee we could send some of those fish to Europa and make the solar system’s biggest fishbowl!
E.M.Smith
September 22, 2016 at 2:04 am
Please don’t give NASA ideas.
Official leak: NASA reveals Europa is ONE GIANT ORGANISM. All those veins on the surface…
Gairopa !!
g