Watch here: http://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
NASA Teleconference About 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.
NASA currently plans to perform additional flybys of Europa and put a lander on the surface as part of the Europa Clipper mission. The ESA's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer will also fly by Europa twice, but focus on Ganymede.
Nasa to Reveal 'Surprising' Activity On Jupiter's Moon Europa
There's something going on beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa. But what?
NASA teased a "surprising" announcement for Monday, based on Hubble Space Telescope images of the celestial body, which many experts believe could contain a subsurface ocean, even possibly some form of life.
The US space agency has already proclaimed that Europa has "strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its crust and which could host conditions favorable for life."
At Monday's announcement, "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," it said in a statement.
The announcement will be made at a news conference at 2 pm (1800 GMT) Monday featuring Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, and William Sparks, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
(Score: 5, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday September 25 2016, @10:20AM
all the rest are yours. stay the fuck off europa.
(mod'd for 2016 vernacular.)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @11:55AM
George Soros missed that movie.
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Monday September 26 2016, @01:48PM
ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
WHICH IS A
SAFE
PLACE
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday September 26 2016, @01:50PM
*safe space
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(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday September 26 2016, @03:24PM
Oh right, load of ridiculous cupcakes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @06:57PM
Until 2061.
And after that until 3001.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @11:41AM
Zooming in on the picture shows a suspicious looking rectangular black object.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Monday September 26 2016, @12:07PM
Ah. That's where I left my phone.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @04:07PM
I hope it's not a Galaxy Note 7, else the aliens will be offended and kill us off.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday September 26 2016, @12:00PM
If there's a moon of Jupiter called 'Europa', then why isn't there one called 'Euroma'?
(I kid. I kid!)
More seriously, I'm truly curious as to what they are going to announce. I've never ceased to be amazed by what astronomers have been able to elucidate from the obscure bits of data they acquire, yet, what can they tell from Hubble imaging of Europa? That they have seen plumes of water vapor (possibly frozen) above the moon? The skeptic in me thinks this is just a ploy to get some positive press for NASA. The optimist in me hopes for some really Earth-shaking (heh!) announcement. I guess only time will tell.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Monday September 26 2016, @01:24PM
If you look carefully at the € 2 coin for Greece [europa.eu], you can see Europa riding her bull.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday September 26 2016, @01:48PM
More specifically, that's Zeus turned into a bull with the goal of scoring with Europa. Which makes her "riding" the bull take on entirely new meaning. One of the things you learn when studying Greek mythology is that it has all of what George W Bush accidentally referred to as "exquisite sex and wholesome violence that underscores our values."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Monday September 26 2016, @02:10PM
That seems to have been a Saturday Night Live skit.
http://ynucc.yeungnam.ac.kr/~bwlee/esc/bgdebate_prd.htm [yeungnam.ac.kr]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday September 26 2016, @02:46PM
It was used by SNL, but it was also a real quote.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @04:53PM
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday September 29 2016, @12:46PM
I didn't find anything credible on the Web. A request was made on Wikiquote in 2008 but no one had a source.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:George_W._Bush#Fake_SNL_quote [wikiquote.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Webweasel on Monday September 26 2016, @05:03PM
https://imgur.com/gallery/7KxmNhH [imgur.com]
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday September 26 2016, @01:13PM
I imagine some intelligence out there, wondering how life could possibly evolve under the constraints of a gravity well. You would be squashed to the surface of some rock, hardly able to move, except maybe with the support of liquid or gas. It just doesn't make sense to suppose that anything complex could evolve under such constraints...
Point is: We seem to always assume water = life, we look for planets in goldilocks zones, of roughly the same size as Earth, because that's what we know. Sure, maybe there's life on Europa. Meanwhile, what other possibilities have we failed to imagine?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday September 26 2016, @01:40PM
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=15060&cid=389581#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Life could probably find a way in 2g-2.5g conditions, and that could mean a wide range of planets have a mass suitable for life (say, 0.5-8 Earth masses). Once a planet becomes a mini-Neptune (10 Earth masses?), that's where the trouble might start. Also, the boundary between giant rocky planet and mini gas giant might be a little flexible and based on protoplanetary conditions.
The amount of water could be interesting as well. Some exoplanets are covered in miles of liquid water, with no land. Life might be able to form in that condition, but good luck advancing to building printing presses, radio towers and spaceships if there is no dry land (an icy region floating on the water doesn't count - there would be no trees or iron/stone/uranium/etc. there).
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 26 2016, @02:29PM
We know that to be true on Earth, but does that preclude the development of technology in an aqueous environment? I'm not so sure. On Earth, aquatic species grow intricate structures (sponges, coral). There are also aquatic species that are quite intelligent (whales, dolphins, octopi). There's also the observation that creatures tend to use what's available; TIMTOWTDI. It would be extraordinary to discover intelligent sub-aquatic life that harnesses an organic technology whereby they direct other species to construct their tools and structures for them, using the minerals in solution.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday September 26 2016, @07:51PM
Life could probably find a way in 2g-2.5g conditions
Angle of repose is mostly independent of gravity so the landscape would look more or less similar.
However potential energy will not be denied and the impact damage of falling in 2G will be much worse than falling in 1G it would scale with the square of acceleration.
That will have two interesting life features, one is rivers will gouge the earth more violently making a more treacherous landscape and the other is large bipedalism is not likely a survivable thing, long term. Maybe something human sized could evolve but it would be the local equivalent of megafauna, biggest thing on the plains. Likely that means has to be herbivore which means it'll be pretty dumb.
Going the other direction the earth is pretty marginal for long term water at 1G and much less you end up with mars, normal ionization and dissociation in the upper atmosphere combined with low escape velocity for hydrogen in lower G means all your water blows away in a 100 million years or whatever.
There are other problems with solar cycles and geology and gravity where you can't just cheat and say "OK evolution happens 10x slower" because due to solar growth cycle we only have a couple hundred milliion years plus or minus the usual snowball earth episodes before the sun makes life untenable here, and 10x slower rate would mean the alpha predator over the entire life of the planet would only be a trilobite or maybe only a protist of some type.
So using known biochemistry anything smaller than 1G implies a desert planet "dune" without much life, and anything larger than 1G implies ever smaller herbivore megafauna leading to smaller (dumber) carnivore/omnivore life. 1G seems to lead to life where a tiny fraction wonders about the effect of 1G so if we're not a lucky local maxima we're at least close to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:04AM
Potential energy goes as g not g^2. Likewise, impact velocity goes as sqrt(g).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @01:51PM
The more we discover the more things we consider. Before Europa no one theorized that life could exist on a moon or outside the goldilocks zone. There are even ideas out there that life, very different from our own, could exist on places like Titan where the liquid and weather on the surface is not water but hydrocarbons. As we learn more ideas evolve. That's the excitement of science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @02:18PM
There are more geniuses on other planets than there are people on Earth.
(Score: 3, Funny) by theluggage on Monday September 26 2016, @02:35PM
Meanwhile, what other possibilities have we failed to imagine?
Science Fiction is chock full of silicon-based life forms, sentient stars & planets, intelligent dust clouds, giant space amoebas, self-aware systems of convection cells in an ocean and super-intelligent shades of the colour blue - I don't think the human race can be accused of lack of imagination.
However, what we do lack is any clue of what signs to look for that might indicate, say, creatures living in the quantum foam or comets with neurones formed from exotic phases of cometary ice (hopefully, they'll find a way of texting us before sending an armada to avenge the victims of the weapon of mass destruction known as 'I Love Lucy' whose resonances cause degrebulization of the zagbards in juvenile Grobogulans - but then if we can't be bother to read the notice written plain as day in the modulation of the Hubble constant, maybe we just deserve to be stomped...)
Now, with ugly bags of mostly water like us, however, we know the signs: liquid water, abnormal oxygen levels, methane, complex organic molecules, discarded fast food wrappers and fucked-over ecosystems...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @07:21PM
Point is: We seem to always assume water = life, we look for planets in goldilocks zones, of roughly the same size as Earth, because that's what we know. Sure, maybe there's life on Europa. Meanwhile, what other possibilities have we failed to imagine?
What do you propose we do to locate things we don't even know we don't know?
Of course we are still doing basic science to search around for basic knowledge (among other things, see the recent large number of planets outside our solar system which have been discovered in the past 10 years). In the meantime, though, what should we do? Say "hey, this planet has water, let's not bother investigating it because water was essential to life on Earth and that's all old-hat by now. We want something NEW!"
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday September 27 2016, @09:54AM
To a certain extent what you say is true, but unless the laws of physics and chemistry are somehow radically different in other parts of the universe (and we're pretty damned sure they aren't), then actually we can make quite a few good assumptions that put boundaries on the likely places to find life:
1 - Life is basically an exercise in chemistry [1] which means that you need a stable-ish environment where chemistry can occur. That means the surface of stars, the hearts of black holes and the depths of gas giants are out of the question. They are too hot, too intense for atoms to bond together and then unbond later in useful and interesting ways.[2] Similarly ridiculously cold places are unlikely to harbour life, since chemistry can't happen without energy.[3]
2 - More specifically, life is about chemistry which enables the capture, storage and release of energy in a controlled and repeatable way. That is a requirement for growing, feeding, reproducing etc. You can't call something "alive" if it doesn't do anything more interesting than sit still and slowly decay / erode / rust / maybe grow some pretty crystals. Things that behave that way are called "rocks" and if they are alive then PETA are going to get even weirder. Anyway, some elements are better for working with energy than others. Carbon is more useful than silicon, for instance. Silicon is more useful than, say, iron. That's one of the reasons SETIists are always banging on about water and oxygen and carbon - they're very well suited to the kind of dynamic chemistry that enables energy management.
3 - Furthermore chemistry needs chemicals (obviously) and evolution can only work with what's available. It's all very well hypothesising an alien that eats plutonium and craps out skittles but that life form isn't ever going to evolve because there just aren't significant naturally occurring deposits of plutonium anywhere in the universe. Water, on the other hand, is abundant, probably one of the most common things in the universe (after nothingness, helium and loose hydrogen.) Carbon too is pretty commonplace compared to most other elements.
4 - Which leads us to the point of the post; gravity wells. For chemistry to occur you need all these things (useful elements, stable-ish environment) all together in one place. That doesn't happen out in deep space. Even what we think of as "clouds" in space, the colourful[4] star nurseries and spectacular nebulae you see in hubble photos are still incredibly sparse, desolate volumes of slightly-less-close-to-vacuum-than-usual bugger all.[5] The only thing capable of bringing elements together is... gravity. I guess you could argue that life might arise on some negligible-gravity asteroid or comet or something but then we are back to (1) the stable-ish environment. Planetary atmospheres (and oceans) are great for smoothing out the extremes of hot and cold found in space, and also for stirring and mixing all those chemicals together to enable the chemistry to happen.
[1] Unless you want to go completely Star Trek and start talking about "energy-based life forms" and such which, well, you might as well be talking about the FSM.
[2] I think some people (science fiction authors, at least) have suggested that there may be some kind of "chemistry" going on in the most super-intense hot environments, where atoms break down and you just have a soup of subatomic particles whose interactions in those conditions we don't yet fully understand. That would fall under "...laws of chemistry work differently in other parts of the universe" as stated in the first paragraph.
[3] Technically what we are looking for is an energy gradient - IE a place where there are patches of higher energy and patches of lower energy and some way of exploiting the difference. This might be possible on extremely cold worlds, but at best you could expect any life to be ridiculously slow-moving: As in, "a seed takes a hundred thousands years to grow a leaf" kind of slow.
[4] False colour, remember. In "true colour" those images would be just white specks on a black background, same as any other patch of sky.
[5] I guess it might also be worth considering the proto-stellar disc just before a star ignites. Thick(ish) soupy mixture of elements, parts of it would be of a sensible (and maybe stable?) temperature... who knows? Of course star ignition would be an extinction event.
Disclaimer: IANAPhysicist, Chemist or Xenowhateverist. Corrections from more educated people are more than welcome.
TL;DR: We look for life on goldilocks planets because Science.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 26 2016, @01:56PM
It was already accepted that Europa probably has a subsurface ocean. I doubt that life could be spotted under Europa's crust from space, although if there are gases escaping, maybe that would be their evidence. So I guess they are going to announce new measurements of the size of the ocean or intentions to drill through the crust and insert a robotic submarine. That's a mission that would probably require an RTG... solar won't cut it. They will also talk about the 2022 Europa Clipper mission.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @04:12PM
Oh, ah, yah, space-bot porn...
[smoke cigar]
Soylent should really carry an age warning.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 26 2016, @04:19PM
SoylentNews: unsafe for all ages.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Monday September 26 2016, @06:19PM
I remember reading that NASA was very very concerned about having curiosity dip its toes in some water path for fear of contamination from earth born creepy crawlies. Seems not everything onboard was sterilized.
Should we not have the same concern in something that may have much more rich opportunity for life (and growth). I would hope we could start with passive methods of observation before taking a risk of infecting a unique environment.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:12AM
Curiosity was not designed to contact liquids and was thus not sterilized sufficiently for that. A probe designed to touch liquid or potential liquid would need to be better sterilized, such as "baked" longer and hotter. Doing that is costly, though, because it complicates electronics and internal chemistry labs, being they have to withstand more heat.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday September 26 2016, @02:05PM
Here in England it's so green
Martian men can move unseen
Apparatus underground
Monitor the crunching sound
Joey's gone and Georgie's gone
Put their best torn trousers on
Found a crowbar and a drill
Headed for the Berlin wall
And last night I swear I saw her face
As they stormed the gates of satellite TV
(Europa)
Too bad, I don't get news at ten
'Cause the CNN would tell a different story
Eastern Bloc, Eastern Bloc
You're never gonna break that deadlock
How can I shake that gridlock?
Shell shock
Tuning out, tuning in, Europa, Europa
Shine across these waves and rescue me
Loud and clear, through thick and thin, Europa, Europa
Come in, come in, come in, come in, do you read?
Are you receiving me?
So I was fourteen, she was twelve
Father traveled, hers as well
Down the beaches hand in hand
Twelfth of never on the sand
And we said we'd be the pirate twins again
In the freezing rain of the Eastern Bloc
And I used to think each time we kissed it was for real
But tonight I feel that the wind has changed
Eastern Bloc, Eastern Bloc
You're never gonna break that deadlock
How can I shake that gridlock?
Shell shock
Tuning out, tuning in, Europa, Europa
Shine across these waves and rescue me
Loud and clear, through thick and thin, Europa, Europa
Come in, come in, come in, come in, do you read?
Are you receiving me?
Eastern Bloc, Eastern Bloc
You're never gonna break that deadlock
How can I shake that gridlock?
Shell shock
Tuning out, tuning in, Europa, Europa
Shine across these waves and rescue me
Loud and clear, through thick and thin, Europa, Europa
Come in, come in, come in, come in, do you read?
(Europa)
Tuning out, tuning in, Europa, Europa
Shine across these waves and rescue me
Loud and clear, through thick and thin, Europa, Europa
Come in, come in, come in, come in, do you read?
Are you receiving me?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Monday September 26 2016, @02:22PM
...because they've said it's not aliens :(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37470837/nasa-announces-it-hasnt-found-aliens-on-one-of-jupiters-moons
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @03:58PM
I bet it's just the usual announcement.
NASA: Oh, hey, we are going to announce something big about Europa this afternoon.
Press: NASA is going to announce something earth-shattering that will change our lives forever. Life on Europa!
NASA: No, it's not life, but here's something interesting we saw in the ice that doesn't indicate life at all, but might interest a geek. Neat, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @04:41PM
Yeah, soon I'm going to stop paying attention... feels like they got themselves a '00+ marketing specialist. "Hype people up for every stupid thing, get visibility, no such thing as bad publicity! Wait, we're hearing reports, it seems people care less and less about NASA every time we hype up our scientific findings. Congress is pulling funding, says 'we're tired of your mind games NASA, find some real aliens or get another job!' Shit, I guess marketing and science don't go well together...."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @04:05PM
"There's no water; there's no geysers; there's no life; it's dry, dead, and boring. Now, go home everybody."
(Score: 3, Funny) by snufu on Monday September 26 2016, @05:10PM
u can hz othur plnts.
stop creep on uropa.
kthxbye
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:22AM
Space-cats, I knew it! They've been flooding Earth with videos for years.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @10:08PM
I was fourteen
She was twelve
Father traveled, hers as well
Europa
Down the beaches
Hand in hand
Twelfth of never on the sand
Then war took her away
We swore a vow that day:
We'll be the Pirate Twins again, Europa
Oh my country, Europa
I'll stand beside you in the rain, Europa
Ta republique
Nine years after, who'd I see
On the cover of a magazine?
Europa
Buy her singles and see all her films
Paste her pictures on my windowsill
But that's not quite the same
It isn't, is it?
Europa my old friend
We'll be the Pirate Twins again
Europa
Oh my country.
Europa
I'll walk beside you in the rain
Europa
Ta republique
Blew in from the hoverport
She was back in London
Pushed past the paper men
Calling her name
She smiled for the cameras
As a bodyguard grabbed me
Then her eyes were gone forever
As they drove her away
We'll be the Pirate Twins again, Europa
Oh my country, Europa