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. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Nov 18, 2009 - 46 comments

Second Sun? Not in my solar backyard! The so far successful Cassini-Huygens Mission has been extended by two years, but we can rest easy knowing that if NASA ever scraps the probe by sending it into Saturn's heart, the end result will not be a redundant Sun. After all, Galileo took a programmed header into Jupiter back in September 2003 and we're all still alive, right? But for some, that's not enough to disprove the biggest conspiracy of all time: Project Lucifer STARCHILD!!! [Cue Soundtrack Music] [more inside]
posted by grabbingsand on Jul 25, 2008 - 39 comments

Fabio Feminò has an enormous collection of science fiction magazines to share with us. AWESOME!
posted by tellurian on Apr 4, 2006 - 5 comments

Galileo's compass (with sound). Galileo Galilei's compass resembles a calculator. In Le Operazioni del Compasso Geometrico e Militare (Padua, 1606), Galileo describes over 40 operations that can be carried out with this instrument. Try using the compass yourself.
posted by matteo on Feb 25, 2005 - 6 comments

Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan holds on to its mysteries. Radar images reveal quite a bit of variation but no clear interpretation. The hazy atmosphere prevents the sudden shock of discovery that characterized the Voyager and Galileo flybys of the moons of Jupiter, revealing little more than fuzzy Rorschach blobs. With less than 1% of the surface mapped, researchers suspect that Titan has a young surface shaped by processes that have yet to be revealed.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Nov 5, 2004 - 5 comments

In case you've been wondering about Europe's nascent GPS system, the Economist has an update.
posted by kliuless on Jan 29, 2004 - 2 comments

NASA's Official 'Galileo Dies' Page. Galileo is set to crash into Jupiter on Sunday. Responsible for many great images and tons of information, Galileo served well. Find a complete history of the Galileo mission here. Also, don't forget to watch the End of Mission webcast this Sunday at approx. 2 PM EST here.
posted by Ufez Jones on Sep 16, 2003 - 7 comments

Swan song for a great explorer. Tomorow, the Galileo explorer will make a flyby of Jovian moon Amalthea ending pehaps the geatest unmanned mission in NASA history. Galileo telemetry may not survive the flyby having already receieved much more radiation than it was designed for. Even if it does survive, this will be its final orbit scheduled to crash into Jupiter in September of next year. In spite of antenna difficulties, the spacecraft returned many beautiful images of Jupiter's moons, along with coverage of the Shoemaker-Levy collision and the first atmospheric probe to decend into Jupiter's weather.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Nov 3, 2002 - 9 comments