Reference: we-are-believe.blogspot.com
Showing posts with label planemos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planemos. Show all posts
Reference: we-are-believe.blogspot.com
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The instantly recognisable brown bands on Jupiter are of unknown composition. Image credit: tonynetone (Flickr)"
However, liquid water can exist in some out-of-the-way places. Several of Jupiter's moons experience such strong gravitational interactions with Jupiter and each other that they are heated up by tidal flexing, making them warm enough to sustain water in its liquid form, despite being five times further away from Sun than the Earth is!
One strong candidate for a watery moon is Europa. It has a frozen ice outer shell, and it's speculated that underneath might be that liquid gold - water. Scientists are still unsure just how much internal heating Europa receives, so it's still not fully known how thick the ice is. Tidal flexing keeps it dynamic and changing, and scientists have observed that the surface is lined with cracks, possibly formed from the ice chaotically pulling apart and smushing back together like giant icebergs in a mosh-pit. This is some of the evidence suggesting there might be a liquid Europan ocean underneath its icy crust.
Giant icebergs in a mosh-pit
We know that disequilibrium and dynamic change are characteristic of global cycles, which could potentially sustain an interacting biosphere. Planets and moons with lots going on are instinctively considered more "alive" than those that are unchanging rocks. So with the active energy source supplied by tidal forcing, and the possibility of a watery abundance, can we expect to find mermaids swimming beneath Europa's ice shell?
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Europa: a cracked ball of ice - but is there liquid water underneath? Image taken by the NASA Galileo spacecraft in 1996"
Once again, one has to think outside of the box when considering possibilities for Europan life. What might be lethal to some forms of life on Earth might be vital to something that might live on Europa. For example, Jupiter has a strong magnetosphere, which blasts harsh radiation towards its moons. Humans would never be able to survive there. But perhaps some forms of life could have adapted this radiation to their advantage. It's speculated that the radiation splits the water molecules on Europa's surface, allowing the hydrogen to float off into space, and the oxygen to sink into the ocean, mixing down to feed underwater life protected from the external radiation.
Life continues to surprise us, even on Earth. Scientists have discovered an abundance of organisms living at the bottom of our oceans near boiling hot hydrothermal vents, and it is possible that the internal tectonics on Europa cause hydrothermal vents to exist there, too. Maybe we can find analogous life thriving there as well.
But, maybe not. Our definition of life is really quite nebulous, and we only have one example of a planet to base it off of. Perhaps alien life will be so strange that we don't recognize it, or perhaps it is simply not there. But we'll never know if we don't look.
We'll never know if we don't look.
Artist's impression of the JUICE spacecraft near Jupiter.
"Image credit: ESA/AOES"
The next mission to Europa is called JUICE: JUpiter ICy moon Explorer. It's run by the European Space Agency, and is scheduled to conduct flybys of Europa in 2030. Some groups have also pushed to send a lander to sample surface geology and perhaps melt down through the ice to explore the ocean beneath, but nothing concrete is planned yet.
Though all we can do for the moment is speculate about what might exist there, if life can thrive inside a planet, then we have many more options of where to look. Europa is definitely expanding our ideas of where a habitable zone can exist.
"This article is a part of our World Space Week series 2013 series of planetary science articles, and was written by Lori Dajose - a Planetary Science and Philosophy student at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). Lori would love to find alien life one day, and is an avid fan of coffee."
MAY 27, 2013 - SPACE - We have good reason to believe that some of Jupiter's moons could have life. A new probe mission aims to head there and find out. Opportunity, the older (and smaller) rover cousin of Curiosity made the headlines last week when it discovered more conditions that could have supported life on Mars in its past. But for our best chance of finding life elsewhere in the Solar System, we may need to look beyond the dusty plains, vast mountains and deep canyons of Mars, and travel past the scattered cosmic debris of the asteroid belt. There, in the shadow of the bloated stripy gasbag Jupiter, could be actual living organisms - not the desiccated and irradiated remnants of long dead microbes that scientists hope to find on the red planet.A new mission called Juice, aimed at launching in 2022 will spend at least three years studying Jupiter's moons for signs of life (Copyright: European Space Agency) Jupiter has just under 70 documented moons, the four largest of which are the Galilean moons Io, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. Io is a fiery world of volcanoes, molten lava and billowing clouds of toxic sulphur; Callisto, an ancient pockmarked body covered in a crust of icy rock. But beneath the vast cracked pancakes of ice on Ganymede and Europa, there are oceans of water. And where there is water, you have the potential for life.This intriguing possibility has led to the development of a new internationally supported mission to Jupiter's Moons, Juice, being put together by the European Space Agency. Juice, rather tenuously, stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer - an acronym that, I am told by a reliable source, was arrived at after quite a few late-night drinks.More and more research seems to indicate that the presence of liquid water and hydrogen peroxide atmosphere on Jupiter's moon Europa could support life. (Copyright: NASA).Almost everything we know about Jupiter's moons is thanks to the Galileo mission in the mid-1990s.(Copyright: NASA).The probe will set off for Jupiter in 2022. After it arrives in 2030, it will spend at least three years studying the Jovian system, flying past the planet and its icy moons and ultimately ending up in orbit around the massive Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System."It's a fabulous mission," says Andrew Coates from University College London, one of the lead scientists on the project. "It will compare all three [icy] moons, look at the habitability of all three and the formation processes." By "habitability", he means the right conditions to find life. Or, at least, life as we know it."You need a source of energy, you need liquid water, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and sulphur," says Coates. "Then you need enough time for life to develop."Both Ganymede and Europa are in with a fighting chance of possessing all these attributes. They certainly have liquid water and could easily have the molecular building blocks for life. When it comes to energy, Europa has traditionally been the favourite among astrobiologists. It is the only one of the Jovian moons likely to have a rocky ocean floor, meaning there could be hydrothermal vents. These underwater chimneys support thriving communities of plants and animals on Earth. With no significant energy from the Sun, hydrothermal vents could provide chemical energy for life.Weird worldsAs almost everything we know about Europa comes from Nasa's Galileo mission [LINK TO: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/ ] of the mid-1990s, which spent eight years studying Jupiter and its moons, hard evidence for habitability is hard to come by. However, new research adds weight to the claim that Europa is indeed where ET will be hanging out.Some scientists think another of Jupiter's moons, Ganymede, may be a better bet as it has a magnetic field that helps protect it from radiation. (Copyright: NASA). NASA's Kepler Space Telescope's mission to find a new Earth outside our solar system has sadly been hampered by a malfunction in its orienteering system. (Copyright: NASA). Based on what we know about Europa today, we have good reason to believe that it is habitable - by Earth based standards - for life as we know it," says Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.Using data from Earth-based telescopes, Hand and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology recently confirmed a widespread abundance of hydrogen peroxide across much of Europa's surface. This substance could help provide the chemical energy needed for life in the ocean below. And, unlike on Mars, there might be enough energy for larger multi-cellular organisms, rather than just microbes."We don't know that much about the evolution of complex life forms on Earth and so it's hard to make a prediction about Europa," Hand explains. "That said, some of our work indicates that compounds like hydrogen peroxide and oxygen, which are produced by the irradiation of Europa's surface ice, could lead to a chemically and energy rich ocean that might be capable of powering complex organisms."So if life is out there, what form is it likely to take?"Anything is possible when you consider a second, independent origin of life," Hand says. "I'd bet it would likely be heavily dependent on acoustic and sonar sensory perception, since it would live in a vast ocean and have the ice sheet above cracking and creaking, day in and day out, as the moon is tidally tugged and pulled by Jupiter."Although it is exciting to imagine a sea full of fearsome alien fish with giant ears, this is, of course, just speculation. The evidence for habitability is growing but just because somewhere is habitable doesn't mean that there is life. In fact Coates reckons Ganymede is a better candidate."It's got a magnetic field that helps protect it from radiation," he says. "One of the problems with Europa, in particular, is that the radiation environment is higher there, so the deflection by the magnetic field of radiation could play a key role in making the chemistry right at Ganymede. I think Ganymede is more interesting than Europa in fact." The ice covering Ganymede's liquid ocean also has a thicker crust, which may help with shielding from radiation.Kepler had recently discovered two of the most intriguing candidates yet, which orbit the Kepler-62 star in the Constellation Lyra. (Copyright: NASA).Back on Earth, SETI launched a website last year where the public can sift through signals from radio telescopes for signs of life. (Copyright: Science Photo Library) The frustrating thing about all this is that, even if everything goes to plan, we will have to wait at least 17 years until Juice gets to Jupiter, and 19 years until it orbits Ganymede, before we get close to any answers. But Coates looks on the bright side: "It's remarkable to think that two-year-olds now could potentially be doing their PhDs, just as Juice goes into orbit around Ganymede."It is also maddening that there is not enough money in the mission budget to include a lander to investigate the surface of either moon. Nevertheless, if results from Juice produce compelling evidence that these Jovian satellites are indeed habitable, you can bet there will be a scramble to build one.If it turns out that there is life on such weird worlds as Europa and Ganymede - even in an insignificant solar system in the outer reaches of the galaxy such as ours - then there is a good chance that life is widespread in the universe.And that is very exciting indeed. - BBC.
NASA announced that a assistant of scientists analyzing images under enemy control by the spacecraft Moon Solar Reconnaissance Orbiter found a petty, partial channel systems on the bring to a close of the Earth's inherited satellite.
The researchers suppose that these rifts that produced for example the film of the Moon was in group places expand and dilapidated, causing crash and the crash of the material scheduled the dirty. It is standard that the moon was hit by a Mars-sized object on our planet about 4, 5 billion duration ago. The thump impecunious dazed from the Earth's exact, which was our inherited satellite. So far, but, believed that the moon produced original fit molten rock, which as a result began to indifferent down. As a result of cooling of the deep, the moon began to cut, and produced on its bring to a close "wrinkles". Based on the extent of these structures, scientists probable that the turn your back on among the "purpose" of the moon, and its bring to a close was on sale by a unmitigated of about 90 meters. found rifts, but, shed new light on the beginning of Earth's satellite. Naked depressions produced up to 50 million duration ago, which means that they are reasonably new structures on the lunar bring to a close. Dive a intensity of 20 meters and its space is about 500 meters.
Such formation of land did not stem as a result of contraction of the object, but its amplification. According to astronomers, this is evidence that the moon is uniform obviously energetic. What's excellent, original forming it rocks were not able-bodied melted. The manifestation of fix minerals in the deep led to a inherited satellite of the to your house stretching of the film and the formation of tectonic trenches. Time was it was conventional that the moon may be expanding. If it turned out that the satellite is diminishing improbable, the earth would be compromised.lunar truth moon landing
Weird
aliens
nibiru
end of the world
doomsday
judgement day
The radar albedo of the Tethyan drowse is to boot very high. The well-off hemisphere of Tethys is brighter by 10-15% than the tedious one.
This minced looks near the anti-Saturn side of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 33 degrees to the command. The image was hard in clear light like the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 15, 2013.
The minced was acquired at a liberty of regarding 503,000 miles (809,000 kilometers) from Tethys. Model speed is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens scheme is a pen project of NASA, the European Take five Chest of drawers and the Italian Take five Chest of drawers. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a offshoot of the California Pioneer of Machinery in Pasadena, manages the scheme for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were intended, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging wand is based at the Take five Science Pioneer, Sandstone, Colo.
Credit: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
LINK
by RONALD REGEHRTHE ALIEN CHASERDON ECKER, LONG SAGA OF LUNAR ANOMALIES,UFO MAGAZINE, VOL. 10, NOL 2 (MARCH/APRIL 1995), P. 23FROM INFORMANTNEWS WEBSITETHE MOON IS THE ROSETTA STONE OF THE PLANETS."-ROBERT JASTROWFirst Chairman, NASA Lunar Exploration CommitteeAfter hundreds of years of detailed observation and study, our closest companion in the vast universe, Earth's moon, remains an enigma. Six moon landings and hundreds of experiments have resulted in more questions being asked than answered. Among them:1. MOON'S AGE: The moon is far older than previously expected. Maybe even older than the Earth or the Sun. The oldest age for the Earth is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old; moon rocks were dated at 5.3 billion years old, and the dust upon which they were resting was at least another billion years older.2. ROCK'S ORIGIN: The chemical composition of the dust upon which the rocks sat differed remarkably from the rocks themselves, contrary to accepted theories that the dust resulted from weathering and breakup of the rocks themselves. The rocks had to have come from somewhere else.
3. HEAVIER ELEMENTS ON SURFACE: Normal planetary composition results in heavier elements in the core and lighter materials at the surface; not so with the moon. According to WILSON,"THE ABUNDANCE OF REFRACTORY ELEMENTS LIKE TITANIUM IN THE SURFACE AREAS IS SO PRONOUNCED THAT SEVERAL GEOLOGISTS PROPOSED THE REFRACTORY COMPOUNDS WERE BROUGHT TO THE MOON'S SURFACE IN GREAT QUANTITY IN SOME UNKNOWN WAY. THEY DON'T KNOW HOW, BUT THAT IT WAS DONE CANNOT BE QUESTIONED."4. WATER VAPOR: On March 7, 1971, lunar instruments placed by the astronauts recorded a vapor cloud of water passing across the surface of the moon. The cloud lasted 14 hours and covered an area of about 100 square miles.
5. MAGNETIC ROCKS: Moon rocks were magnetized. This is odd because there is no magnetic field on the moon itself. This could not have originated from a "close call" with Earth-such an encounter would have ripped the moon apart.
6. NO VOLCANOES: Some of the moon's craters originated internally, yet there is no indication that the moon was ever hot enough to produce volcanic eruptions.
7. MOON MASCONS: Mascons, which are large, dense, circular masses lying twenty to forty miles beneath the centers of the moon's "maria","ARE BROAD, DISK-SHAPED OBJECTS THAT COULD BE POSSIBLY SOME KIND OF ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTION. FOR HUGE CIRCULAR DISKS ARE NOT LIKELY TO BE BENEATH EACH HUGE "MARIA", CENTERED LIKE BULL'S-EYES IN THE MIDDLE OF EACH, BY COINCIDENCE OR ACCIDENT."8. SEISMIC ACTIVITY: Hundreds of "moonquakes" are recorded each year that cannot be attributed to meteor strikes. In November, 1958, Soviet astronomer NIKOLAY A. KOZYREV of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory photographed a gaseous eruption of the moon near the crater Alphonsus. He also detected a reddish glow that lasted for about an hour. In 1963, astronomers at the Lowell Observatory also saw reddish glows on the crests of ridges in the Aristarchus region. These observations have proved to be precisely identical and periodical, repeating themselves as the moon moves closer to the Earth. These are probably not natural phenomena.
9. HOLLOW MOON: The moon's mean density is 3.34 gm/cm3 (3.34 times an equal volume of water) whereas the Earth's is 5.5. What does this mean? In 1962, NASA scientist DR. GORDON MACDONALD stated,"IF THE ASTRONOMICAL DATA ARE REDUCED, IT IS FOUND THAT THE DATA REQUIRE THAT THE INTERIOR OF THE MOON IS MORE LIKE A HOLLOW THAN A HOMOGENEOUS SPHERE."NOBEL CHEMIST DR. HAROLD UREY suggested the moon's reduced density is because of large areas inside the moon where is "simply a cavity."
MIT's DR. SEAN C. SOLOMON wrote,"THE LUNAR ORBITER EXPERIMENTS VASTLY IMPROVED OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE MOON'S GRAVITATIONAL FIELD... INDICATING THE FRIGHTENING POSSIBILITY THAT THE MOON MIGHT BE HOLLOW."IN CARL SAGAN's treatise, Intelligent Life in the Universe, the famous astronomer stated, "A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object."
10. MOON ECHOES: On November 20, 1969, the Apollo 12 crew jettisoned the lunar module ascent stage causing it to crash onto the moon. The LM's impact (about 40 miles from the Apollo 12 landing site) created an artificial moonquake with startling characteristics-the moon reverberated like a bell for more than an hour.
This phenomenon was repeated with Apollo 13 (intentionally commanding the third stage to impact the moon), with even more startling results. Seismic instruments recorded that the reverberations lasted for three hours and twenty minutes and traveled to a depth of twenty-five miles, leading to the conclusion that the moon has an unusually light-or even no-core.
11. UNUSUAL METALS: The moon's crust is much harder than presumed. Remember the extreme difficulty the astronauts encountered when they tried to drill into the maria? Surprise! The maria is composed primarily illeminite, a mineral containing large amounts of titanium, the same metal used to fabricate the hulls of deep-diving submarines and the skin of the SR-71 "Blackbird". Uranium 236 and neptunium 237 (elements not found in nature on Earth) were discovered in lunar rocks, as were rustproof iron particles.
12. MOON'S ORIGIN: Before the astronauts' moon rocks conclusively disproved the theory, the moon was believed to have originated when a chunk of Earth broke off eons ago (who knows from where?). Another theory was that the moon was created from leftover "space dust" remaining after the Earth was created. Analysis of the composition of moon rocks disproved this theory also.
Another popular theory is that the moon was somehow "captured" by the Earth's gravitational attraction. But no evidence exists to support this theory. Isaac Asimov, stated,"IT'S TOO BIG TO HAVE BEEN CAPTURED BY THE EARTH. THE CHANCES OF SUCH A CAPTURE HAVING BEEN EFFECTED AND THE MOON THEN HAVING TAKEN UP NEARLY CIRCULAR ORBIT AROUND OUR EARTH ARE TOO SMALL TO MAKE SUCH AN EVENTUALITY CREDIBLE."13. WEIRD ORBIT: Our moon is the only moon in the solar system that has a stationary, near-perfect circular orbit. Stranger still, the moon's center of mass is about 6000 feet closer to the Earth than its geometric center (which should cause wobbling), but the moon's bulge is on the far side of the moon, away from the Earth. "Something" had to put the moon in orbit with its precise altitude, course, and speed.
14. MOON DIAMETER: How does one explain the "coincidence" that the moon is just the right distance, coupled with just the right diameter, to completely cover the sun during an eclipse? Again, Isaac Asimov responds,"THERE IS NO ASTRONOMICAL REASON WHY THE MOON AND THE SUN SHOULD FIT SO WELL. IT IS THE SHEEREST OF COINCIDENCES, AND ONLY THE EARTH AMONG ALL THE PLANETS IS BLESSED IN THIS FASHION."15. SPACESHIP MOON: As outrageous as the "Moon-Is-a-Spaceship Theory" is, all of the above items are resolved if one assumes that the moon is a gigantic extraterrestrial craft, brought here eons ago by intelligent beings. This is the only theory that is supported by all of the data, and there are no data that contradict this theory.Greek authors ARISTOTLE and PLUTARCH, and Roman authors APOLLLONIUS RHODIUS and OVID all wrote of a group of people called the Proselenes who lived in the central mountainous area of Greece called Arcadia. The "Proselenes" claimed title to this area because their forebears were there "before there was a moon in the heavens."
This claim is substantiated by symbols on the wall of the Courtyard of Kalasasaya, near the city of Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, which record that the moon came into orbit around the Earth between 11,500 and 13, 000 years ago, long before recorded history.1. AGES OF FLASHES: Aristarchus, Plato, Eratosthenes, Biela, Rabbi Levi, and Posidonius all reported anomalous lights on the moon. NASA, one year before the first lunar landing, reported 570+ lights and flashes were observed on the moon from 1540 to 1967.
2. OPERATION MOON BLINK: NASA's "Operation Moon Blink" detected 28 lunar events in a relatively short period of time.
3. LUNAR BRIDGE: On July 29, 1953, JOHN J. O'NEILL observed a 12-mile-long bridge straddling the crater Mare Crisium. In August, British astronomer DR. H.P. WILKENS verified its presence,"IT LOOKS ARTIFICIAL. IT'S ALMOST INCREDIBLE THAT SUCH A THING COULD HAVE BEEN FORMED IN THE FIRST INSTANCE, OR IF IT WAS FORMED, COULD HAVE LASTED DURING THE AGES IN WHICH THE MOON HAS BEEN IN EXISTENCE."4. THE SHARD: The Shard, an "obelisk-shaped object" that towers 1 1/2 miles from the Ukert area of the moon's surface, was discovered by Orbiter 3 in 1968. DR. BRUCE CORNET, who studied the amazing photographs, stated,"NO KNOWN NATURAL PROCESS CAN EXPLAIN SUCH A STRUCTURE."5. THE TOWER: One of the most curious features ever photographed on the Lunar surface (Lunar Orbiter photograph III-84M) is an amazing spire that rises more than 5 miles from the Sinus Medii region of the lunar surface.
6. THE OBELISKS: Lunar Orbiter II took several photographs in November 1966 that showed several obelisks, one of which was more than 150 feet tall."... the spires were arranged in precisely the same was as the apices of the three great pyramids."
MOON STATISTICS
MASS (KG)
7.349e+22
MASS (EARTH = 1)
1.2298e-02
EQUATORIAL RADIUS (KM)
1,737.4
EQUATORIAL RADIUS (EARTH = 1)
2.7241e-01
MEAN DENSITY (GM/CM^3)
3.34
MEAN DISTANCE FROM EARTH (KM)
384,400
ROTATIONAL PERIOD (DAYS)
27.32166
ORBITAL PERIOD (DAYS)
27.32166
AVERAGE LENGTH OF LUNAR DAY (DAYS)
29.53059
MEAN ORBITAL VELOCITY (KM/SEC)
1.03
ORBITAL ECCENTRICITY
0.0549
TILT OF AXIS (DEGREES)
1.5424
ORBITAL INCLINATION (DEGREES)
5.1454
EQUATORIAL SURFACE GRAVITY (M/SEC^2)
1.62
EQUATORIAL ESCAPE VELOCITY (KM/SEC)
2.38
VISUAL GEOMETRIC ALBEDO
0.12
MAGNITUDE (VO)
-12.74
MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE (DAY)
107^0C
MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE (NIGHT)
-153^0C
MAXIMUM SURFACE TEMPERATURE
123^0C
