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From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Expedition to Europa
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 14:17:13 -0700
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On 6/27/2024 11:39 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
> But ever since NASA’s Voyager flybys in 1979 and the flagship
> 1995-2003 Galileo mission to Jupiter, scientists have assembled an
> increasingly convincing body of evidence that beneath Europa's frozen
> surface lies a massive saltwater ocean containing 2-3 times the water
> in all the oceans on Earth.

IIRC, didn't Clarke pose the same possibility a few (4) decades back in one
of the "2001" sequels:  "All these worlds are yours -- except Europa..."

> Scientists suspect that Europa’s sea, which lies about 60 mi. beneath
> the surface, remains liquid due to the heat of tidal flexing as
> Jupiter’s gravity stretches and squeezes the moon. Europa, with a
> diameter of about 1,900 mi.—slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon—circles
> Jupiter every 3.5 days. Like Earth’s Moon, Europa is tidally locked,
> resulting in one hemisphere always facing Jupiter. Tidal forces on
> Europa are about 1,000 times stronger than the Moon’s effect on Earth.
> 
> Europa’s surface is young—just 40-90 million years old— but its inner
> ocean is believed to have existed for billions of years, long enough
> for the chemistry of life to evolve. And while there is no evidence of
> life on Europa, scientists suggest the moon may have environments
> similar to Earth’s deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, where unique
> ecosystems thrive despite extreme temperatures and pressures, toxic
> minerals and no sunlight.
> 
> Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 2012 and 2014 also
> suggest water from inside Europa may intermittently vent into space as
> plumes, similar to what the Cassini spacecraft has observed on
> Saturn’s moon Endeladus. Astronomers estimate Europa’s plumes rise
> about 125 mi. into space before raining material back down onto the
> moon’s surface.
> 
> Most big librarys carry AW.
> 
> .<https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/about/>
> 
> If it turns out that there is life in the ocean of Europa, which has
> existed for something like four billion years, it supports the general
> idea of "random but inevitable" theories of Abiogenesis.

_Remembrance of Earth's Past_ has an interesting take on the whole
notion behind an "empty" universe.  It's a tedious read (mainly for
me coming from a non-chinese culture... just keeping track of the
characters is difficult) but has some good ideas to chew on at its core.