51–60 of 278 posts
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There’s an image of Europa from Webb in the article.
It's less clear than I'd expected. Is that image deliberately downscaled so as to not reveal the true capabilities of the telescope optics?
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Honestly, the only thing I wish to see before I die is a submarine mission to Europa or Ganymede. It would be even more mind blowing and an amazing achievement for humanity, and the search for extraterrestrial life. That, and the dragonfly-helicopter-thing on Titan. Have you ever seen the Sun set on a methane lake? It's time for a rewatch of Europa Report (2013).
It's such a shame that the lander component of Europa Clipper got cancelled.
Shame. We should be scrambling to land probes there yesterday.
“All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Attempt no landing there.” You have been warned guys… ;)
Honestly, the only thing I wish to see before I die is a submarine mission to Europa or Ganymede. It would be even more mind blowing and an amazing achievement for humanity, and the search for extraterrestrial life. That, and the dragonfly-helicopter-thing on Titan. Have you ever seen the Sun set on a methane lake? It's time for a rewatch of Europa Report (2013).
Europa is definitely the most exciting part of the solar system that sparks imagination. Literally 100s of miles of pitch black ocean with thermal vents, ripe for life. Getting kiddy thinking about the leviathan sized aliens roaming the deep ocean of Europa. Does anyone else feel this way?
Could you have leviathan sized animals with no phytoplankton? Seems like thermal vents would provide a lot less energy than the Sun, but I’m really out of my depth.
Yes. See e.g.:
https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/how-giant...
These aren't "leviathan-sized" but they could easily provide food for something that big. The base of this food chain would be chemosynthetic bacteria. After that, energy is not the limiting factor on size.
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It's such a shame that the lander component of Europa Clipper got cancelled.
It did?! :(. Shame. We should be scrambling to land probes there yesterday.
With Europa Clipper there was also the incident that Congress tried to write into law that it had to launch on SLS. The Clipper team were leaning towards using Falcon Heavy ($90M). In the end Congress only relented because the Clipper team said they'd need another $1B in funding (in addition to the $2B+ for an SLS launch itself) to make the delicate instruments on Clipper capable of withstanding the extremely rough ride that SLS offers.
So now Europa Clipper will be a Jupiter orbiter that does several flybys of Europa.
Europa is definitely the most exciting part of the solar system that sparks imagination. Literally 100s of miles of pitch black ocean with thermal vents, ripe for life. Getting kiddy thinking about the leviathan sized aliens roaming the deep ocean of Europa. Does anyone else feel this way?
Europa Report (movie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avzqYgtpdMQ I enjoyed it ^^
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2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey
Seems pretty. Will read soon.
My theory is that 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a lot like Blade Runner, pre- the various Ridley Scott re-cuts.
Drop the voiceover, tweak the ending to be less literal / sentimental, fix some of the FX matting, and you’d be left with one of the best serious SF films since 2001.
An aside, but hovering over the image only to have it obscured... and then smaller on click, is a little comical.
This is obviously a ginormous leap from this announcement and just a tangent sparked by it. The possibility of intelligent life developing on a world like Europa encrusted with what is effectively a miles think solid atmosphere has always been one of my favorite feasible sci-fi hypotheticals. Could you imagine how that would impact their culture? Would they even know there is anything on the other side of the ice? Th…
Europa is definitely the most exciting part of the solar system that sparks imagination. Literally 100s of miles of pitch black ocean with thermal vents, ripe for life. Getting kiddy thinking about the leviathan sized aliens roaming the deep ocean of Europa. Does anyone else feel this way?