Europa, Jupiter's Moon, Could Support Complex Life

[Soylent Brice]

Oct. 8, 2009 -- Jupiter's moon Europa should have enough oxygen-rich water to support not only simple micro-organisms but also complex life, according to a University of Arizona researcher who studies ice flows on the frozen moon.

Judging by how quickly Europa's surface ice is replenished, Richard Greenberg estimates that enough oxygen reaches the subterranean ocean to sustain "macrofauna" -- more complex, animal-like organisms.

Assuming Europa life forms would need as much oxygen as Earth-like fish, Greenberg estimates the moon's ocean has enough oxygen to support 6.6 billion pounds of macrofauna.

A key question about whether Europa can support life has been whether its suspected buried ocean contains adequate levels of oxygen.

read more: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/08/europa-water-life.html

[beam me up scottie]

1. Look at all the tracks made by the scientists' snowmobiles!

Are we going to blow that one up next?

[Whisp]

2. lol. good one.

wasn't that a shameful moment in DU history, amongst others?

heheheh

[beam me up scottie]

6. Very sad, yes.

I felt the same way when bush was representing us to the world.

[Occulus]

14. Please keep in mind, though, that it was only a few people

Most of the people on those threads were trying to counteract the woo. Myself, for one.

Now, if the majority of DUers were concerned about the moon's ecology (!! :wow:), I would be worried. Thankfully, it's just the one.

[beam me up scottie]

18. Thank you for your effort.

It's getting extremely difficult to tell spoof from reality.

[Ian David]

9. Let's send Sarah Palin and her hawzbyind Tyawhd on their snow machines! n/t

[beam me up scottie]

15. Now that is a NASA mission we could really get behind!

She can see outer space from her window.

[Duer 157099]

49. It said "complex life"

I don't really think the Palins qualify.

[SIMPLYB1980]

13. LOL.

:toast:

[beam me up scottie]

20. Thanks!

:headbang:

[Vidar]

3. Clarke had it right in "2010".

[PatSeg]

43. That was the first thing I thought of

when I saw this thread. He was so prophetic about numerous things in his books.

[Tesha]

45. Me three! (NT)

[Scout]

50. "all the worlds are yours save Europa" .... was that it?

read that a long time ago...

[Mrs. Overall]

4. Fascinating!

K & R

[tridim]

5. Looking at extremophiles on Earth I'd be shocked if there was no life on Europa.

I assume Europa has a strong enough magnetic field to take care of radiation. Googling now.

Edit: Apparently Europa doesn't generate it's magnetic field from the core, it uses Jupiter's magnetic field to generate its own. That's pretty nifty!

[Ian David]

10. I'd be shocked if the life on Europa depended on oxygen.

I'd more likely expect chemosynthetic or radiosynthetic life forms at the base of a sulfur-breathing food chain.


Newfound Bacteria Fueled by Radiation

<snip>

A team of scientists has found bacteria living nearly two miles below ground, dining on sulfur in a world of steaming water and radioactive rock. A single cell may live a century before it gets up the energy to divide. The organisms have been there for millions of years. They will probably survive as long as the planet does, drawing energy from the stygian world around them.

The microbes, found in water spilling out of a fissure in a South African gold mine in 2003, are not entirely new, the researchers report in today's issue of Science. They are similar to ones found in other extreme environments and among the most primitive life forms ever described.

What is unusual is that their underground home contains no nutrients traceable to photosynthesis, the sunlight-harnessing process that fuels all life on Earth's surface. Such a community is an oddity on this planet -- and is of interest to people looking for life on other ones.

"There is an organism that dominates that environment by feeding off an essentially inexhaustible source of energy -- radiation," said Tullis C. Onstott, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the team. "The bottom line is: Water plus rocks plus radiation is enough to sustain life for millennia."


Scientist Duane P. Moser stands nearly two miles below the Earth's surface, in the South African mine where the bacteria were discovered. (Courtesy Of Duane P. Moser -- Desert Research Institute)

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901671.html

[Occulus]

19. I'd be shocked if neither Europa nor Enceladus had life of some sort.

NASA's Cassini probe recently detected plaumes of water ice spewing from Enceladus. The best part? The ice contained traces of minerals that show the water was in contact with rock. Basically, it was "salt water", similar to that of our own oceans, IIRC.

The chances for life being present today on Europa or Enceladus seem to me to be higher even than the chance that life once existed on Mars. We need to go to them both, melt a drill down through the ice, and have a look. Both moons orbit large bodies that provide a magnetic field and the gravity necessary to cause geothermal activity, as Cassini proved in its flyby of Enceladus and as we can see with our own eyes by looking at Europa.

I do think that we will be able to recognize extraterrestrial life as life, though, no matter how different it may be from that found here on Earth. Already, by examining microorganisms such as what you referred to, we're discovering that "life as we know it" is actually a much broader category than what we previously thought, even here on Earth.

The concepts are intriguing. Silicon-based life forms, under the correct conditions, may well be possible. We're coming to discover that "impossible" is a word we should never use in the same sentence containing the word "life", and that's just plain amazing.

[KatyMan]

36. silicon based life forms...

like the horta? We already know about those, we have film and pictures



OK, sorry, but somebody else would've done it eventually :)

[booley]

46. Oxygen is good for complex life

There's a reason we aren't' extremophiles despite that they can survive off very little or environments toxic to us.

A metabolism that uses oxygen can produce a lot more energy. A multi-celluar life form would require a lot of energy.

extremophiles typically also have very slow metabolisms.

And of course, nothing says that an oxygen using organism couldn't have an extremophile symbiont living inside it.

I am more curious about the presence of oxygen at all. Free oxygen should be very rare unless there's some process constantly renewing it.

[Zix]

7. Actually, you dont need oxygen.

Life on Earth started long before oxygen saturated the atmosphere. The oxygen was in fact a by-product of the respiration of the first living things. This lasted for a LONG time.

[whoneedstickets]

16. right! organisms evolved to use this waste poison! Our ancestors...

..were the microbial equivalent of dung beetles!

[Occulus]

21. The awesome part is, once we learn enough about genetics on the molecular level,

we will be able to engineer heretofore nonexistent life forms to, say, clean oil spills, biodegrade styrofoam in landfills, or even process nuclear waste. We will, in time, be able to engineer otherwise innocuous bacteria to literally erase our mistakes. When their environment is gone, they will die, but we'll have something huge in return.

One concern attached to this (and it's a legitimate one) if the very adaptability of life in general. Somewhere out there, there's a bug that will find our biological creations to be a tasty treat. That is only a matter of time. What we need to do is to be ever-conscious of this fact if we're going to make an industry out of applied bioengineering. The field holds great promise, but also great power. We need to think about what we're going to be getting into before we actually do it, so we can be as prepared for those unfortunate eventualities as possible.

As we look at microscopic life forms that developed millions of years ago in environments very unlike that of today's Earth, we learn more and more amazing things life is capable of. This will inspire us in our own biological creations... in time.

[Oak2004]

29. You do need oxygen for macrofauna

Oxygen is necessary for the production of collagen, which is the stuff that holds multicellular organisms together.

[Zix]

31. I didn't know that. How about macroflora?

Hm. I thought it had been hypothesized that the reason we had no evidence of macrofauna during the anaerobic period was because anything big enough to make a fossil would would just get eaten by O2? Probably doesn't hold water.

Macrofauna, though?

[booley]

47. But it didn't become complex until after oxygen

Most of the history of life consist of microbes.

[Ian David]

8. Attempt no landings there!

[glitch]

11. Yes but does it host a Despair Squid? nt

[Blue-Jay]

12. Europa

Tuck Andress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtljYur4_T8&feature=related

[Sky Masterson]

17. Oh Goody

Can NASA bomb that next? :dunce:

[SIMPLYB1980]

22. No but we are going to "PROBE" it.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/02/09/testing-a-europa-probe-prototype/

"While NASA doesn't have any definite plans to send a probe to study Jupiter's moon Europa, many planetary scientists consider the exploration of this enticing moon to be a high priority. Evidence from the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft suggests Europa contains a deep ocean of salty water under an icy outer shell. NASA is, however, helping to fund a prototype of an underwater autonomous vehicle to investigate ice covered lakes here on Earth, to demonstrate if such a vehicle could operate in an environment similar to Europa. The next test of the vehicle will take place Feb. 12-15, 2008 in Lake Mendota on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.The Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer, also known as Endurance, will swim untethered under ice, and collect data to create three-dimensional maps of underwater environments. The probe also will look at the conditions in those environments and take samples of microbial life. Later this year, researchers plan to ship the probe to a permanently frozen lake in Antarctica for more operations. The probe is a follow-up to the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, a NASA-funded project that completed a series of underwater field tests in Mexico in 2007."

[beam me up scottie]

23. "probe" "Robotic Antarctic Explorer" "enticing moon" "Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer"

Anybody else think it's hot in here?

[SIMPLYB1980]

26. Science can be very "Stimulating".

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer?

I just met her!

[chollybocker]

24. "Could Support Complex Life"

Yay!!! No more Freepers to deal with!

I'm moving there tomorrow.

;)

[JVS]

27. How quickly can we bomb it? It's pretty far away

[troubledamerican]

28. Would they be called "Europeans"?

[dysfunctional press]

30. unfortunately, we're not supposed to attempt any landings there...

[Zix]

32. Pah! Spoilsport monoliths! whadda they know?

I think Europa needs a rollercoaster and a coupla Walmarts. Cheer the place up a bit!

[krispos42]

33. Excellent.

we need a soft-landed probe with an ice auger there ASAP

[Ichingcarpenter]

34. See a photo of the earth, moon, Jupiter, Europa taken from mars

All taken in one frame at one time.......


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x57667

[Soylent Brice]

42. just gave you a kick

that was awesome!!

[Orsino]

35. Would intelligence be the same boon to survival on a waterworld...

...as it has been here? With no chance to harness fire or smelt metal, would intelligent life be able to develop much beyond its Stone Age?

[SIMPLYB1980]

38. Octopi are very intelligent.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x8308367

[Orsino]

39. That's what makes me doubt high intelligence on waterworlds.

There are all sorts of ways to measure smarts, of course, but octopi don't make tools, and don't seem to need to.

[SIMPLYB1980]

40. That depends on what you call tool use.

http://radthoughts.com/2007/02/01/octopus-tool-use/

"How do you define tool use? I came across the little octopus on a night dive. He was walking around carrying two halves of a shell with him. When threatened, he closed himself up inside the shell. Now many animals, like the hermit crab, adopt a shell for protection but in this case the octopus carried around two sides that he knew fit together. That comes close to tool use in my book.

An Ocean World Podcast about the Blanket Octopus provides an even better case of tool use. The Blanket Octopus is famous for sexual dimorphism, the male being much smaller (2cm) than the female (6ft). But the really cool thing, in my opinion, is the way the tiny male uses jellyfish tentacles. Apparently he gathers the living stinging tentacles from jelly fish, holds them between his suckers, and wields them when threatened."

[Orsino]

44. Yeah. I was drawing a distinction between using tools...

...and actually crafting them. There may be many more ways than ours to evolve high intelligence, but crafting better and better implements, along with the ever-greater social organization needed to support that specialization, is how we did it.

[Zomby Woof]

37. Let's have NASA blow it up so Europan invaders don't get us!

:nuke: :hide: :scared:

[hfojvt]

41. yeah, but it's Europa

so the life would probably be socialista

Also, it may have water, but it seems to be at least 1 A.U. outside of the biosphere, unless Jupiter throws off enough warmth and light.

[whoneedstickets]

48. One hypothesis is that Jupiter's mass

and tidal forces impart enough energy to keep the core of moons like IO and Europa molten and that this energy might fuel deep aquatic life on the latter planet. So not warmth and light but energy in a different form.