Jupiter Moon's Ocean May Be Too Acidic for Life

Recent findings even suggest its ocean could be loaded with oxygen, enough to support millions of tons worth of marine life like the kinds that exist on Earth.

The ocean underneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa might be too acidic to support life, due to compounds that may regularly migrate downward from its surface, researchers say.

this just came out a few hours ago i believe, but now scientists and astrophysicists are syaing that Jupiters moon Europa may be to hospitable to hold life beneath its icy crust.

Even though Europa is believed to have an ocean that could be 100 miles deep in some spots and is also liquid water scientists believe that chemicals found on the surface of the moon could possibly be found in the ocean that is under the icy crust, and these chemicals are formidible to life.

I have always been a proponent of sending a mission to Europa to drill through the ice and into the ocean to search for life. Up until now scientists believed that marine life under the ice could rival what is found on Earth.

However, chemicals found on the surface of Europa might jeopardize any chances of life evolving there, scientists find. The resulting level of acidity in its ocean "is probably not friendly to life

These findings i believe are a tough hit for the other life in our solar system theory. Everytime we find somewhere that could possibly harbor life that isnt bacteria we always find a reason why life can't flourish there.

Any surviving ecosystem in Europa's ocean might be analogous to the microbial community found in acid mine drainage on Earth, such as the bright red Río Tinto river in Spain. The dominant microbes found there are acid-loving "acidophiles" that depend on iron and sulfide as sources of metabolic energy.

www.space.com...

reply to post by caf1550

These findings i believe are a tough hit for the other life in our solar system theory

Not really , all I see from your post is could , might be and probably which means its all speculation , even if we went to Europa and found no life it wouldn't effect the chances of finding life on other planets and Moons .

I couldn't read the story as your link doesn't work

Edit
Fixed link

However, "one of the interesting possibilities is that they might have used blue phosphates as their bone material instead to evolve large organisms,"

Even so they're not ruling out finding more complex life .

reply to post by gortex


appreciate the fixed link, i actually got rid of the yahoo link and jsut linked it to space.com since they have the story on there also,

now i wasn't ruling out them still possibly finding life i was just trying to say that its speculation now that Europa may be to hospitable for life

for a few years now Europa has been speculated as one of the best places for us to find life in our solar system and now all its being said that it may not be able to hold life in its ocean. whenever we find somewhere we believe life will be down the road we find reasons as to why life can't be there. its just dishearting

Hmmmm... A bit of soda need!

Sending drills to deep space is a bit of a problem. The 2-mile drill hose by itself they use in Antarctica weigh in at 25,000 pounds, then consider the actual drill and motor, and power source. I didn't read much more at the time but I expect a whole autonomous drill on a space craft would be more than the 250,000 pound Apollos that achieved escape velocity. Now imagine an autonomous machine 'unfolding', or somehow assembling and positioning itself to drill to begin with. That's a hell of a lot more that the Curiosity powered landing apparatus. just saying

reply to post by Illustronic


well you gotta think they wouldn't be sending a mission there anytime soon, by the time they do you would hope that we would have advanced some technology by then to make it easier to drill through the ice on Europa.

id like to think that if nasa was to send a mission it would hopefully be in the next 20-30 years

Originally posted by Illustronic
Sending drills to deep space is a bit of a problem. The 2-mile drill hose by itself they use in Antarctica weigh in at 25,000 pounds, then consider the actual drill and motor, and power source. I didn't read much more at the time but I expect a whole autonomous drill on a space craft would be more than the 250,000 pound Apollos that achieved escape velocity. Now imagine an autonomous machine 'unfolding', or somehow assembling and positioning itself to drill to begin with. That's a hell of a lot more that the Curiosity powered landing apparatus. just saying

Wouldn't be a problem if it was a nuclear heated element That burrowed and melted its way through the ice.

Does not have to be a drill hose.

reply to post by amongus


Then you have the issue of contamination to think of. I don't believe we will find any life, but what if we did and we somehow eradicated it by introducing life from Earth that "invaded" and life on Europa had no defense against. This is something I would want to be done very carefully.

Something I don't understand is, how do these scientist know that it is inhabitable...
Perhaps to us maybe, but for other 'alien' life, it may very well be what they need to survive in...

reply to post by 98yekiM


well life "as we know it" needs water and oxygen to survive the scientists believe that the chemicals on the surface

Europa happens to be rich in strong oxidants such as oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, which are created by the irradiation of its icy crust by high-energy particles from Jupiter

The oxidants on Europa's surface are likely carried downward in potentially substantial quantities by the same churning that causes water to rise from below. Oxidants could be of great use to any life in Europa's ocean — for example, oxygen was pivotal to how complex life evolved on Earth

Originally posted by amongus

Wouldn't be a problem if it was a nuclear heated element That burrowed and melted its way through the ice.

Does not have to be a drill hose.

Believe me I thought of this, as did many space exploration enthusiasts, but outside of the introduction of invasive elements, this method doesn't have a mechanism to keep the hole from closing back up. If some autonomous sub is following the radioactive 'melting element', in search for life wouldn't that pose a great problem with its sensor instruments, not to mention the hole closing up and cutting a communications conduit. There also is the possibility that the area selected isn't entirely ice, and not a thick ice covered surface, I doubt the decay heat could breach.

They drill deep holes in Antarctica quite rapidly but the key is the drilling operations are manned. Lots of on-the-fly adjustments have to be made by men with spare parts, and ingenuity in decision making perhaps at times fixing problems they haven't considered until something not anticipated happens. If they can drill down a mile and a half in just two days the hole closing up is much less a problem, they then reopen the hole as they recoil the drill and can place their sensors on down with a direct line for communications, a wire.

I'm drawing from Antarctic drilling operations by reading some information from links provided in this thread.

I also liked the part where they said about 4,800 gallons of fuel is used to drill a mile and half deep hole, the icy moons could have a hundred mile thick layer of ice, and dropping down radioactive plutonium or some other rare earth element is nothing more than introducing a time bomb to an alien biosphere, with little chance of getting any significant data from.

Complex problems but not impossible, but would require quite a bit of resources to get any usable data whatever method means the drilling is carried out. The wider the hole the more resources are required, how small can they make a UAV with enough scientific instrumentation in it?

This baby is the short UAV in operation, the cylinder is about 12 inches in diameter, a typical length one below. It can operate autonomously for months but it gets recharged from an underwater docking station, connected to a wire. Not saying it couldn't operate from a RTG, but there is still that line of communication problem.






Here's the RTG on the Cassini spacecraft.



New Horizon's.



It all looks that with some engineering a UAV probe mission leaves room for a possibility, maybe sooner than later, maybe not.

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

Serioualy though, I really want us to shoot for Europa.
I don't think it will be too acidic.. or we will find that life can thrive in that type of acidic environment. We thought life couldn't exist without the sun, until we found the underwater vents.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


where is that qoute from, All these worlds are yours...except Europa attempt no landings there

Originally posted by caf1550
reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

 

where is that qoute from, All these worlds are yours...except Europa attempt no landings there

2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke later made into a movie.

Monolith jealously guarding Europa:



There are bacteria on Earth that can live in acidic environments. They are called acidophiles, and some are the oldest bacteria we know of (Archaea).

en.wikipedia.org...

Silly humans you know nothing of how life works or the universe and the grand expanse. Just as there will be science there will always be the unknown and of course when we do find life on Europa, science will concoct a theory to further explain its existence...

reply to post by Nicolas Flamel


thats a pretty interesting qoute seeing as how much speculation there is in finding life on Europa, well prior to NASA coming out with this statement