131–140 of 278 posts
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?
I realize some conservationists disagree.
“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).
> a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid water—possibly twice as much as in all of Earth’s oceans combined. If we brought water back a container of water from Europa would this be the largest amount of new water entering the earth since planets struck it billions of years ago? I briefly googled it (I dont know much about this stuff tbh): > The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s be…
Comets do fall from time to time, and Earth collects 5000 tons of debri from space each year. So I imagine Earth does gain a few tons of water from time to time.
That is a lot more than I would have guessed. I had thought that we were very slowly leaking precious resources by sending rockets into space, but I guess we're actually still gaining resources on average.
(At least, I don't think we're sending 5000 tons beyond the atmosphere every year).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s been here for nearly 5 billion years. We create tons of water as a byproduct of many industrial processes, that's "new" water. Of course in the grand scheme of things the quantities are inconsequential, so the statement is probably still generally true...
Except water is H2O where the oxygen comes from plants and plants get it from water and the hydrogen comes from hydrocarbon fuels where the hydrogen comes from water again. So technically you can never create new water on Earth but you can bring in more from the space.
I'm not a chemist, so I may be totally wrong here, but does a water molecule "care" where the source of its oxygen and hydrogen come from? If you brought oxygen from space, and hydrogen from space, couldn't you then create new water on Earth?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're quite open about the capabilities of the optics (see https://webb.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqScientists.ht... ). It's just that Europa is very far away. Webb's mirror system has an angular resolution of about 0.1 arcseconds. Earth is currently about 630 million km from Europa (Webb is only 1.5 million km away from earth). Because the sine of theta is approximately equal to theta for values of theta…
For the conspiracy theorists: this is the same reason why we can't just point Webb at the moon and get pictures of the lunar landing sites. In terms of arcseconds of the Webb's FOV, the moon landing site is much smaller than these distant galaxies (which blows my mind just how big those distant "objects" are).
> a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid water—possibly twice as much as in all of Earth’s oceans combined. If we brought water back a container of water from Europa would this be the largest amount of new water entering the earth since planets struck it billions of years ago? I briefly googled it (I dont know much about this stuff tbh): > The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s be…
This is why I roll my eyes at alarmist talk of various processes "consuming X zillion gallons of water". Water is much stronger than that. It just passes through our processes and will outlast us all.
We are consuming water from places where it has been relatively static, at rates far beyond its natural replenishment rate. THAT'S the issue. Yes, this is a closed system, and the human circulatory system is a closed system. But it's bad if you drain the blood from your brain faster than it is replenished.
> a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid water—possibly twice as much as in all of Earth’s oceans combined. If we brought water back a container of water from Europa would this be the largest amount of new water entering the earth since planets struck it billions of years ago? I briefly googled it (I dont know much about this stuff tbh): > The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s be…
This is why I roll my eyes at alarmist talk of various processes "consuming X zillion gallons of water". Water is much stronger than that. It just passes through our processes and will outlast us all.
There's a huge difference of usability between different water sources. You can't irrigate your orchards with salt water from the ocean. You can't bathe in waste water from most manufacturing plants. You can't drink ground water that has been contaminated by fracking.
There is a finite amount of potable water. There is a finite amount of usable water for agriculture. Pointing at all of the water on earth and acting as if it's all immediately usable without significant, costly barriers is silly.
> a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid water—possibly twice as much as in all of Earth’s oceans combined. If we brought water back a container of water from Europa would this be the largest amount of new water entering the earth since planets struck it billions of years ago? I briefly googled it (I dont know much about this stuff tbh): > The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s be…
Comets do fall from time to time, and Earth collects 5000 tons of debri from space each year. So I imagine Earth does gain a few tons of water from time to time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every once in a while, I get reminded that people don’t necessarily have a scientific background. 1. Water molecules are not indivisible, of course. Many biological processes will rip apart hydrogen and oxygen, or combine them back together, and have been doing so for billions of years. Industrial processes do the same. So there’s plenty of “new water” from oxygen in the air, etc. 2. New water/oxygen/hydrogen land on…
As a percentage of total water on earth, how many of the H2O molecules do you speculate came from comets or industrial processes? Same question for the biological processes you mention.
Linda Moulton-Howe covered some testimony from "insiders" that alleged that there is an octopus type species living under the ice covered ocean of Europa. I have no idea which Earthfiles episode this was in, but cool if true.