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The mission would involve developing a new kind of spacecraft known as Trident.
It would fly to Triton and take photographs of the icy object, while also studying its atmosphere and chemical makeup for signs of an underground ocean.
[...]
Little is known about Triton, and the only images we have of the moon were captured by the Voyager 2 probe in 1989.
During that flyby, space boffins spotted geysers on Triton that spewed out nitrogen gas. Nasa earmarked it for further research.
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NASA Wants to Explore Neptune’s Moon Triton—Solar System’s Coldest Object May Have Ocean Life
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A woman was in love with fourteen soldiers. It was clearly platoonic.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday March 25 2019, @05:01PM (6 children)
With all these ice-ball-but-maybe-with-life planets, I mean.
When the amount of energy introduced into the ecosystem via sunlight/thermal vents/whatever per day is so slow, does that slow down metabolic processes? Evolution? Are the functional populations all tiny because of limited food, and would they get side effects similar to island gigantism?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @05:54PM (4 children)
It is possible in some of these cases for the internal heat to decrease. But sometimes conditions are good:
Porous Core Could be Keeping Enceladus Warm [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday March 25 2019, @06:46PM (3 children)
Sure, I agree it can be more than warm enough for liquid water, but in terms of coherent energy that can be used for the processes life needs, the total amount being brought in each day is way way way way lower than earth's insolation that our plants and phytoplankton eat. Orders of magnitude less.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @07:05PM (2 children)
The hope is that life is clustered around hydrothermal vents.
Minerals In Plumes of Enceladus Indicate Hydrothermal Activity [soylentnews.org]
Hydrogen Emitted by Enceladus, More Evidence of Plumes at Europa [soylentnews.org]
Complex Organic Molecules Found on Enceladus [soylentnews.org]
Did life on Earth start at a place like this, or did it start elsewhere and evolve to exploit these vents?
The evidence seems to support a very fast presence of unicellular life on Earth, which could mean that interstellar panspermia is a thing, or that life just arises quickly in places where the conditions are ideal. That could bode well for these underground oceans, but as you said there is a lot less energy available. Billions of years have passed since life arose on Earth though. We may also have numerous different oceans [wikipedia.org] to study, each providing another shot for life.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:24AM (1 child)
I don't know how to respond to things sometimes.
You've very thoroughly answered a slightly different question than the one that interests me, with good quality information that I already know pretty well. It's not like I want to be angry about that, you're doing a kind an informative thing, but not about the actual questions I asked.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:39AM
Hint: A hydrothermal vent inside an icy world isn't going to have orders of magnitude less energy than one on Earth. Maybe less, and less of them, but if life is super easy to get started, it might not matter.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday March 25 2019, @06:21PM