OT: Pick one solar system destination to look for life
Today, NASA confirmed that Jupiter's moon Ganymede (Jupiter's largest) has a 60-mile thick saltwater ocean under its surface. Everyone on Earth where you find liquid water, you find life. So add Ganymede to the list of possible places to look for life.
Thought occurs to me, I throw it out there to the space geeks among us. (STAND UP AND BE PROUD.) I'm appointing each of you Czar of NASA, and challening you to fund one and only one mission to a non-Earth destination, with enough equipment to find whatever life is there (whatever kind of life it is). Which one do you think has the highest probability of life, if it's anywhere off of Earth, which destination would you choose? But also consider, how difficult would the trip be to get there, and how hard would it be to get to wherever you'd expect to find the living organisms.
Your most likely candidates in mostly alphabetical order, but you can add any others:
Enceladus -- medium/small moon of Saturn, also has ice surface with undersurface water ocean, and very recently alleged to have underwater heat vents (which is particularly yummy for life, because they provide energy/food -- e.g. vents at bottom of Earth oceans harbor extremophiles).
Europa -- 4th largest moon of Jupiter; ice surface with huge flowing water ocean underneath; sometimes has holes/cracks in the ice that let its undersurface ocean spew into space; NASA is already talking about a mission to Europa. One thought isn't to actually land on Europa nor burrow through the ice (although NASA is thinking of doing that), but to send a ship thru the geysers that form when water spews out of the cracks -- and see what is in that water.
Ganymede -- 2d largest moon of Jupiter, has 60-mile thick salt water ocean under surface -- but, that surface is about 95 miles of rock and ice, so what would be the source of food/energy for life down there; and is the water too briny, and how would you get through the surface?
Mars -- the only planet on this list, has frozen ice for sure, and there are photographs that hint of water that sometimes flows down hillsides, suggesting there could be buried liquid water not terribly far below surface. "Easiest" trip (relatively speaking) on this list, for sure -- we've already had plenty of robots there.
Titan -- largest moon in the solar system, orbits Saturn; has clouds, rain, oceans, rivers, and lakes...but made of methane, not water; temperature is 100 degrees below zero...in Celcius; yet, on Earth some anerobic bacteria thrive on methane or other hydrocarbons, like in tar pits, so it's not out of the question life could live on Titan.
Columbus, OH -- hey now, I didn't ask about finding intelligent life, so it's not a valid option for this particular question. I think we can all agree that the green/brown gunk you scrape off the underside of the seats in the Big Horseshoe is some form of life.
eligible as a planet? If the answer is no, GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
Udamnnearkilled'em!!
Eh, probably too much toxic gas hanging around to sustain life
It's Europa. Read the Space Odyssey series.
it's Zooropa. Duh.
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March 13th, 2015 at 12:16 AM ^
I thought we were supposed to attempt no landings there?
humans listened to anyone?
Cloud critters, baby.
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Earff
Europa
Oh come on, be nice to Columbus, which OBVIOUSLY has life. The average undergrad there is just teeming with biodiversity. Not to mention the coolers.
We already found life on Ceres. Those bright spots Dawn picked up are undoubtedly glints from the scope on the barrel of the giant space gun the aliens there are planning to blast us with if we get unruly.
Obligatory:
I hate the off season.
EDIT: I'll take Enceladus for the fact that the no matter how small, most forms of life need substance/food to survive and that seems to be the best chance. At least as far as options in our solar system goes anyway.
I liked your question BTW. It's just super slow in the office today and there's a muscle spasm in my elbow that hasn't gone away for ike 3 days.
r/howtogainweight
Westeros.
I think there's actually two questions here.
The first is: what's the most likely place to find life off Earth in our Solar System? That question probably has a half dozen reasonable answers - Enceladus and Europa seem the most likely, but Mars has a pretty good shot and there are lots of other places you could make the case for (comets, anyone?).
The second question, is which place are we likely to find life on first? Enceladus might be the most likely place to harbor life in the Solar System, but we're more likely to find it on Europa because it's easier to get to Jupiter than it is to Saturn. Similarly, we could find evidence of bacterial life on Mars tomorrow. We've got things on Mars, and a mission to Europa probably wouldn't arrive for another decade or potentially more, Saturn could take even longer.
Little early in the day to be high as fuck isn't it?
not at all.
I resemble that remark.
To answer the o.p. question--Europa.
Yet another example of why I love this place. Where else can a band of brothers, united in their love of all things Michigan athletic, join together in a rousing discussion of the probability of alien life in our solar system on the same afternoon as a basketball open thread?
From "look out Upton - Spike is on FIRE!" to a discussion about Ganymede's underground ocean and heat vents and the same people talking about both.
Yes--and as an bonus, trash talking the home base of a hated rival while doing so.
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Europa and the Pirate Twins
There's promise and discovery, but then a few short years later, the aftermath....
Europa.
Titan's name may imply it is our solar system's largest moon, but that honor actually goes to Ganymede. Both of which are larger than Mercury. For the sub-Mercury moons, I think it goes Calliston, Io, Earth's and finally Triton.
If you were basing your decision on something other than diameter (mass?) then you could be correct, though in that case the word choice "largest" was misleading.
Correct. When i was reading that, i was wondering how much stock to put into the facts stated by the articlet when they got the simplest fact wrong - the largest satelite in the solar system. Add to that, these are not 'Moons' - they are satelites. Does anyone state that the sun has 9 earths orbiting around it? (or however many planets and their classification the bored people of NASA say are in our solar system this week).
"Moon" is the name of our moon or natural satellite, but there are artificial satellites and potentially minor natural satellites and satellites of asteroids and all that. "Moon" is simply another term to reference a large, natural, celestial body orbiting a planet. If you want to get upset about Earth's moon being called "Moon", get upset that English didn't adapt Luna (which still means moon in Latin, but would at least give it distinction). For what it's worth, we run into the same issue when talking about "Earth", where there could be other Earths, but we named our planet "Earth".
Anyway, by average diameter and by mass of the moons goes:
1. Ganymede 2. Titan (both larger than Mercury in size, smaller in mass, close to Mars in diameter) 3. Callisto 4. Io 5. Moon 6. Europa
Kepler-186f, or Kepler-62f.
I think we should first try to get a man on the moon.
Also, have you heard about the 13 year old drinking prodigy accepted to OSU?
Somewhere in the Alpha Centauri system. I just know the Robinson's finally made it.
If we're talking about two questions:
1) Where can look most efficiently for evidence of exterrestrial life? Mars wins becasue of proximity not only to Earth, but to the Sun which provides Mars with a fighting chance of having environmental characteristics at least within reason to how we understand organisms to develop on Earth.
2) For chance at establishing a next permanent human presence? Mars again. Closest to Earth, has at least some in situ resources we know are useful, and the climate is the least extreme, meaning we have to spend less engineering resources in making a habitat, you know, habitable. Unless you have a highly reliable mechanical system that turn all that planetary thermal source into energy equal to what you get out of pasive solar on Mars, the outer moons don't stand a chance.
Now if you're talking about chance for current day exterrestrial organisms? Europa since it has heat, water, and a dynamic environment (meaning things get swirled around by the heat source) encouraging natural mixing of chemical compounds that would be necessary for life sustaining substances.
Enceladus because of the possible undersurface seas.