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What is so special about Europa, one of Jupiter's 7 Moons, that we can only find on planet Earth? 🌎
Main Post: What is so special about Europa, one of Jupiter's 7 Moons, that we can only find on planet Earth? 🌎
Top Comment: Jupiter has 95 moons, but Europa has water in it
What are your realistic expectations of what we may find in the Europa's sub-surface ocean?
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Like the title says, what are your realistic expectations we may find in global sub-surface ocean of the Europa? You think we will see the ocean with very densely populated cool marine alien creatures or it will be just the ocean with some microbes scattered in some habitable places or it will be complete abiotic and lifeless ocean world (Ik it's disappointing, but still it could be the case)? Let's speculate!
Top Comment: Crabs. It’s always crabs .
Finding life on Europa would be far bigger then anything we would ever find on Mars
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Even if we find complex fossils on mars or actually life, I'd argue that finding life on Europa would be even bigger news even if smaller in size.
any life that formed on mars would confirm that life may come about on planets that are earth like, something we already kinda assume true. Any martian life probably evolved when the planet had surface water and if still alive today, we would be seeing the last remnants of it, a hold out living in the martian soil that still evolved from a very similar origin to that on earth. but even then, there is a chance that they are not truly alien and instead life found itself launched into space and found itself on our neighbor, or perhaps even vice versa in the billions of years that have been. It would be fascinating to see of course, but what finding life on europa would truly mean, i feel is 100,000x greater in value and normies do not seem to appreciate this enough imo.
Any life found inside of europa would truly be alien, it would have completely formed and evolved independently from earth life, in a radically different environment, in a radically different part in space, it being a moon over jupiter. and for 2 forms of life to come about so radically different in the same solar system would strongly suggest the universe is teeming with life wherever there is water. And we see exoplanets similar to jupiter almost everywhere we look, hell we have 4 gas giants in our own solar system, with even more subserface oceans moons, our own solar system could have be teeming with life this whole time!
Europan’ life would teach us a lot about the nature of life and its limits. Depending on its similarity to earth life chemistry, it would tell us just how different life chemistry can be, if it's super similar in such a different place, it would suggest that perhaps the way abiogenesis can happen is very restricted at least for water based life, meaning all life in the universe (that isn't silicon based or whatever) could be more similar than different at a cellular scale. Finding life/ former life on Mars that is similar to earth life would only suggest that the type of life we are, is what evolution seems to prefer for terrestrial planets with surface water.
I could keep going on, but i think you guys get the point, at least i hope you do, it is late and i hope this isn't a schizophrenic ramble, but the key point is, by having a form of life to come from something so different from what we know, it very well could change how we see the universe far more than finding any form of life on mars, and i think its sad that normal people ( who are not giant nerds like us) are more hyped for mars. anyway here is some cool jupiter art i found
Top Comment: Ecosystems have formed around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. They are even hypothesized to have played a significant role in the origin of all life on Earth. That's why ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus are so interesting, they likely have very similar conditions on their ocean floors. So actually life on these moons could be a lot more similar to Earth's than you're assuming. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Biology_of_hydrothermal_vents
If life exists on Jupiter’s moon Europa, scientists might soon be able to detect it
Main Post: If life exists on Jupiter’s moon Europa, scientists might soon be able to detect it
Top Comment: In the next 70 years before I die, I just want to be able to say that aliens are 100% real
CMV: I think odds are that there is life on Europa
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If you are not aware, NASA has put together a mission to send a probe to Europa, a moon of Jupiter (Can Life Exist on an Icy Moon? NASA’s Europa Clipper Aims to Find Out - NASA) I think there's a better than 50% chance that there is life on Europa, and for as monumental of an occasion finding life on another planet will be, I also think that it will be a bigger shock - scientifically speaking - if life is not found!
I say this because we have already found life in places we never thought it could exist. I think this is rather profound, that the implications of NOT FINDING LIFE on other planets (well, a moon) could be more significant than finding life.
Do I have false confidence in life's ability to thrive in the extreme? I am posting this here in the hopes of finding more information that could either further confirm or contradict what I've said here.
Change my view
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I want to thank you, collectively for changing my view on this. I hadn't thought about the step by which inanimate matter comes to life. No scientists have been able to replicate it... It really does seem like a fluke!
I will try to issue some deltas to a few people, but I want you all to know you have my thanks!
Top Comment: I say this because we have already found life in places we never thought it could exist. I think this is rather profound, that the implications of NOT FINDING LIFE on other planets (well, a moon) could be more significant than finding life. The issue isn't life evolving for harsh conditions, but the sheer chance for the genesis of life itself out of lifeless matter which even to this day is poorly understood. One has to appreciate the absolutely staggering complexity of even single celled organisms compared to every machine man has ever built. The mathematical models of evolution can perfectly well explain the rate at which existing life evolves, but exactly how by sheer chance lifeless matter at one point became self-replicating and eventually form life is hard to understand. Indeed, all life on earth is believed to have evolved from a single common ancestor, meaning that the genesis of life on Earth happened only once, that does not give a lot of insight into how likely it is to happen. After all, humans would not be on earth to observe it if it didn't happen. It's entirely possible that even on a planet such as Earth that has favorable conditions for life to develop, the chance is still very small that it would over the course of it's lifetime and it simply did here, but did not on millions of other planets with similar conditions. The hypothesis that life on earth actually did not originally came into existence on earth, but crashed here by some metiorite and in fact came into existence from lifeless matter elsewhere is not easily dismissed as well though similarly hard to prove.
Europa is an icy ocean world—and NASA is finally going to explore it
Main Post: Europa is an icy ocean world—and NASA is finally going to explore it
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Just stopping by to say this is awesome and Europa Report is a banger of a low budget sci fi movie.
What's your opinion on life potentially being on Europa? one of the only places in our solar system that could sustain life.
Main Post: What's your opinion on life potentially being on Europa? one of the only places in our solar system that could sustain life.
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Europa has an underground ocean estimated to be 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep
Main Post: Europa has an underground ocean estimated to be 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep
Top Comment: All that water just sitting there in complete darkness....
NASA okays mission to search for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa
Main Post: NASA okays mission to search for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa
Top Comment: I hope one day the size of the US space budget will be larger than its military budget. But I dream...