NASA to Announce 'Surprising' Europa Discovery Monday

a reply to: jonnywhite

Funding was extended through the launch of JWST so both telescopes will run concurrently. It should be a great way to test the capability of JWST.

Hubble has been going strong for years now! There was a time when nobody even guessed what was out there. Now we have nearly taken it for granted. The scientific discoveries from Hubble are incredible. I would even say bigger than the moon landing. From small bodies in our solar system to outside. The Pillars of Creation is such a cool photo. Now sighting water spewing from Europa's surface... that is some longevity!

originally posted by: audubon

Science was a paradigm shift, requiring us to set aside our common sense for a moment and let the rigidity of experiment and observation speak for itself.

"Common sense" and "rigidity of experiment" are not mutually exclusive!

I just ... have to be a contrarian. Better to just ignore me because I'm not in much disagreemnt with you. I liked your post.

An older article about Europa (dec 2014):
spaceref.com -
Signs of Europa Plumes Remain Elusive in Search of Cassini Data...

Members of Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph (UVIS) team analyzed data collected by their instrument during the brief time it observed Europa in 2001, as Cassini sped through the Jupiter system en route to Saturn. The observations show that most of the hot, excited gas, or plasma, around Europa originates not from the moon itself, but from volcanoes on the nearby moon Io. In fact, from their data, the researchers calculated that Europa contributes 40 times less oxygen than previously thought to its surrounding environment.

"It is certainly still possible that plume activity occurs, but that it is infrequent or the plumes are smaller than we see at Enceladus," said Amanda Hendrix, a Cassini UVIS team member with the Planetary Science Institute in Pasadena, who co-authored the new study. "If eruptive activity was occurring at the time of Cassini's flyby, it was at a level too low to be detectable by UVIS."

A picture of Europa:
www.nasa.gov - Europa's Stunning Surface...
(Source link with full description: www.nasa.gov - Source...)

originally posted by: audubon
This is, frankly, such patent balderdash that it is difficult to accept that any scientist honestly believes it. Some might well have arrived via comet, but all 1.5bn cubic kms of it? Really?

The comet theory is not really the going theory anymore, because the water in many comets (discerned through spectrographic analysis) seems to be of the wrong type of water -- i.e., cometary water seems to have a deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio that is three times that of the water on Earth.

The cometary theory is being supplanted by the idea that most of Earth's water came via asteroids -- the asteroids that helped build the earth in the first place. So some of it came from asteroids when the earth was being formed, some came when it was half formed, and some came when it was almost fully formed. The water found in asteroids seems to have a deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio that matches most of the water on Earth.

The water would have been locked away in the rocks that made up the proto-Earth as it grew, with some of that water eventually making its way to the surface through geologic activity, forming the surface water that we see in oceans, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice caps, and the atmosphere.

New discoveries suggest that there is more water locked in the rocks BENEATH the surface of the Earth (deep crust and mantle) than there is ON the surface of the Earth -- and this could be an indicator that water locked away in the asteroids and other material that Built the earth might be the process that brought most of Earth's water.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: audubon

They actually found free floating water in another galaxy! So, no, water is not some magical item that only exists on earth. The thinking now is that water came to earth and may not even be sourced from our own planet!

The deposits on Ceres (the bright spots) can only form in water. There is 3 mile high ice volcano there! So, it is not super rare out there in space. It just seems we were looking at things wrong.

There is caution and there is holding back information. If it is NASA funded it is our discovery but I know the need for being cautious, so I wait.

It's been several decades since science (or NASA specifically) said water was rare. Even as far back in the 1980s, NASA talked about the Oceans of Europa -- and the possibility of water ice on Ganymede and Callisto. The oceans of Enceladus have been discovered by NASA probes some time ago, too. Titan's sub-surface water ocean had been hypothesized more than 10 years ago through data NASA gathered with its Cassini probe.

Even Ceres was known to most like have a lot of water for about a decade now. back in 2005, NASA's Hubble telescope had found indications that Ceres may have a subsurface water ice:

Largest Asteroid May Be 'Mini Planet' with Water Ice



...And a paper by NASA and JPL from 2010 that discusses the possibility of a liquid water ocean and potential habitability of Ceres:

The Case for Ceres


NASA has talked about water ice on Mars for several decades now, and of water clouds in the atmosphere of Mars and drops of liquid water seen on Mars back almost a decade ago.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: audubon
This is, frankly, such patent balderdash that it is difficult to accept that any scientist honestly believes it. Some might well have arrived via comet, but all 1.5bn cubic kms of it? Really?

The comet theory is not really the going theory anymore, because the water in many comets (discerned through spectrographic analysis) seems to be of the wrong type of water -- i.e., cometary water seems to have a deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio that is three times that of the water on Earth.

The cometary theory is being supplanted by the idea that most of Earth's water came via asteroids -- the asteroids that helped build the earth in the first place. So some of it came from asteroids when the earth was being formed, some came when it was half formed, and some came when it was almost fully formed. The water found in asteroids seems to have a deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio that matches most of the water on Earth.

The water would have been locked away in the rocks that made up the proto-Earth as it grew, with some of that water eventually making its way to the surface through geologic activity, forming the surface water that we see in oceans, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice caps, and the atmosphere.

New discoveries suggest that there is more water locked in the rocks BENEATH the surface of the Earth (deep crust and mantle) than there is ON the surface of the Earth -- and this could be an indicator that water locked away in the asteroids and other material that Built the earth might be the process that brought most of Earth's water.

Yes, sorry, was carelessly using 'comet' as shorthand for 'impactor', mainly because of the recent Rosetta episode being fresh in my mind and a recent conversation about mass extinctions. Thanks for the correction. The deuterium/protium content is similar in some asteroids, less so in some comets. Even the water on the moon is only 'similar'. It's not what you might call a 'watertight' theory (ker-boom, tish).

a reply to: audubon

Yes. I was trying to use waffle words, too, such as "seems" and "could be", but you're right -- I should have also specified that "some" asteroids have the right kind of water and "some" comets do not.

However, I think the idea that asteroids, rather than comets, may have been the bringers of water to Earth. And I just don't mean the asteroids that impacted Earth after the earh was formed...

...I'm talking about the asteroids and other rocks that built up the Earth. It seems now that water can be found trpped in the crystalline structure of the rocks of Earth, and in the crystalline structure of meteorites (pieces of the types of stuff that built the Earth 4.5 billion years ago).

Look up "Ringwoodite". It's a crystal found in the earth's mantle and in meteorites (pieces of asteroids) that is known to be able to hold hydroxide ions (oxygen and hydrogen atoms bound together) within its structure. It is thoughthat there may be as much as 3 times the amount of water locked away in crystals such as Ringwoodite in the upper mantle than there is in all the water on the surface.

This isn't proof that water came from the asteroids rocky material from which Earth was constructed, but it's evidence pointing in that direction.

The protoplanetary cloud of dust and gas from which the solar system was made most like contained a lot of water, and as that cloud coalesced to form lager rocks and asteroid-sized things, that water could have found its way into the crystalline structure of Ringwoodite-rich word and other similar water-holding crystals -- which were the building blocks of the planets and moons of the solar system.