MetaFilter posts tagged with europa

Strange New Worlds

The Whelk — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 08:53:04 -0800

Let's take another look at Chris Wayan's PLANETOCOPIA (previously): A series of detailed conceptions and paintings of vastly different Earths based on differing climates and land mass position. A planet designed to speed up East-West cvilization development! A life-bearing super hot world! An Earth with most of the seas missing! Forever Ice Age Earth! Related XKCD What-If: What if The Earth's surface as rotated 90 degrees?

SciGuy Eric Berger

PapaLobo — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 06:57:05 -0800

One of my favorite blogs happens to be local to me. Eric Berger, the Houston Chronicle's "SciGuy" usually reports on the weather. But he also posts entertaining and serious stuff as well. Example of some fun posts: --Use a condom, save the planet. --Why fingernails scratching on a chalkboard is so annoying. --That creepy guy may be reading your texts. Then there's more serious (and SCIENCE!) stuff: --Nasa "bullshit" --"Great Lakes" on Europa. --Dark Energy and the Nobel Prize. Mr. Berger is my first source for bad weather news, as he always keeps a level head and is pretty much on-the-spot with criticism about how mainstream media overhypes KILLER STORMS and other things. There's tons of interesting stuff here. I hope you find it fun and interesting ... and informative!

All these worlds are yours except... etc.

brundlefly — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:08:27 -0800

The Ice Fracture Explorer is Joseph Shoer's concept for an unmanned expedition into the oceans of Europa. [via]

Explore the Surface of Mercury

SpringAquifer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:37:43 -0800

NASA's MESSENGER team (previously: 1, 2, 3), with help from the U.S. Geological Survey, released yesterday the first global map of the planet Mercury. The map stitches together images from MESSENGER's three recent flybys of the planet with those from Mariner 10, which saw about 45% of the planet in the mid-1970s. While a seemingly simple task, "the challenging part has been to make cartographically accurate maps from a series of images with varying resolution (from about 100 to 900 meters per pixel) and lighting conditions (from noontime high Sun to dawn and dusk) taken from a spacecraft traveling at speeds greater than 2 kilometers per second (2,237 miles per hour)." This map serves an "extremely important use as a planning tool" and signifies that MESSENGER "is no longer a flyby mission but instead will soon become an in-depth, non-stop global observatory of the Solar System’s innermost planet.” Also available to explore on the USGS's Map-a-Planet website: Venus, the Moon, Mars, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, Io, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Iapetus, and Enceladus.

3 Million Tons of Extraterrestrial Ice Fishing

filthy light thief — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:01:42 -0800

At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, according to Professor Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Greenberg recently presented his findings to the Division for Planetary Sciences, American Astronomical Society (PDF, Google quick view). Greenberg has written about potential life on Europa before, but his recent calculations suggest that the concentrations of oxygen would be great enough to support not only microorganisms, but also more complex animal-like organisms which have greater oxygen demands. Water under the ice of Europa is the first step towards life on Europa. Life on Europa has been proposed before, even with potential Europa-like situations found on Earth at the Blood Falls of Antarctica (previously). Water could be warmed through the gravitational push and pull of Jupiter, generating huge planetary waves in Europa's submerged ocean. Galileo's expedition, which found several lines of evidence to support the theory that liquid oceans exist under Europa's icy surface, ended when it crashing into Jupiter to prevent lifeforms from Earth possibly infecting Europa. Jupiter Europa Orbiter is planned to launch February 2020, with a goal to explore Europa to investigate its habitability.

Blood Tide

Artw — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:15:27 -0800

Blood Falls - The iron rich red liquid gushing from a buried Antarctica lake shows how life may have existed on a snowball Earth, or on Europa.

Europa Film Treasures

carsonb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:19:50 -0800

Europa Film Treasures is a new window onto the film archivers of Europe, and "All genres are on the playbill! From comedy to science fiction, from westerns to animation, from erotic to ethnological movies..." take some time to explore the European side of carefully preserved film history.

NASA's 2003 budget cancels the Europa and Pluto missions.

homunculus — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 20:32:33 -0800

NASA's 2003 budget cancels the Europa and Pluto missions. Instead it seeks to produce nuclear powered propulsion. I am sad about the Europa and Pluto missions, I was really looking forward to those, but I am intrigued by the prospect of nuclear propulsion in space.

stbalbach — Mon, 31 Dec 2001 16:59:54 -0800

Euro the new European currency is now official in 12 European countries. In Crete the ancient home of Europa who was a Kings daughter abducted by Zeus, Europa gave Zeus 3 sons and he in turn promised to name a continent after her. Now Europa has a currency as well. In Italy it may not mean love but it does mean cheaper sex. Tonight the ATMs are restocked and even Monopoly money is reprinted.

Interesting hypothesis that Europa's seas are swimming with bacteria.

skallas — Thu, 13 Dec 2001 19:17:12 -0800

Interesting hypothesis that Europa's seas are swimming with bacteria. Preliminary results show that all three species, the ordinary gut bacteria Escherichia coli, and extremophiles Deinococcus radiodurans and Sulfolobus shibatae, are just as good at explaining Europa's IR spectrum as the [magnesium sulphate] salts.