Life on Europa? Neil deGrasse Tyson Speculates...

Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars

www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

It is concluded that a drastic modification of Martian conditions can be achieved using 21st century technology. The Mars so produced will closely resemble the conditions existing on the primitive Mars. Humans operating on the surface of such a Mars would require breathing gear, but pressure suits would be unnecessary. With outside atmospheric pressures raised, it will be possible to create large dwelling areas by means of very large inflatable structures. Average temperatures could be above the freezing point of water for significant regions during portions of the year, enabling the growth of plant life in the open. The spread of plants could produce enough oxygen to make Mars habitable for animals in several millennia. More rapid oxygenation would require engineering efforts supported by multi-terrawatt power sources. It is speculated that the desire to speed the terraforming of Mars will be a driver for developing such technologies, which in turn will define a leap in human power over nature as dramatic as that which accompanied the creation of post-Renaissance industrial civilization.

How much of +Jupiter's moon +Europa is made of water? A lot, actually. Based on the Galileo probe data acquired during its exploration of the Jovian system from 1995 to 2003, Europa posses a deep, global ocean of liquid water beneath a layer of surface ice. The subsurface ocean plus ice layer could range from 80 to 170 kilometers in average depth. Adopting an estimate of 100 kilometers depth, if all the water on Europa were gathered into a ball it would have a radius of 877 kilometers. To scale, this intriguing illustration compares that hypothetical ball of all the water on Europa to the size of Europa itself (left) - and similarly to all the water on planet Earth.

With a volume 2-3 times the volume of water in Earth's oceans, the global ocean on Europa holds out a tantalizing destination in the search for extraterrestrial life in our +Solar System.

Illustration Credit & Copyright: Kevin Hand (JPL/Caltech),
Jack Cook (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), Howard Perlman (USGS)
Explanation of the image from: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120524.html

Milankovitch Cycles

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Milankovitch_cycles

Scotsman James Croll combined the eccentricity of the orbit and the precession and in the 1860s and 1870s presented his ideas on the effects of the cycles and how they might influence climate, especially the colder winters when they correspond with the aphelion. In fact, what are typically called ‘Milankovitch Cycles’ are sometimes referred to as ‘Croll-Milankovitch Cycles.’

ScienceCasts: The Great Lakes of Europa

QOTD

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. -- Helen Keller

Planet-Like Object Found Circling a Brown Dwarf

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100409144354.htm

Kamen Todorov of Penn State University and co-investigators used the keen eyesight of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Observatory to directly image the companion of the brown dwarf, which was uncovered in a survey of 32 young brown dwarfs in the Taurus star-forming region. Brown dwarfs are objects that typically are tens of times the mass of Jupiter and are too small to sustain nuclear fusion to shine as stars do.