NASA discovery, speculation inside

[Cybsled]

The only downside to current Ion drives is that they have very slow acceleration. For shorter trips, they aren't too useful. For very long range trips, they begin to shine.

[ValkyrieIsAboutToDie]

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[EmpireF4i]

Maybe they found a planet with ozone/liquid water on it.

That or they found the planet which OP comes from.

[ChewieTobbacca]

Heh, I was thinking they more likely found Duke Nukem

Anyways, that cryobot is very interesting, and they might try it soon on Lake Vostok. If they find that life can exist there in Antarctica (its a good rehearsal too) despite being under miles of ice and cut off from the world and sunlight for many millenia, then it can certainly exist in Europa.

Europa is interesting cause:

a) The push-pull of Jupiters gravity creates internal oscillations which should theoretically heat the interior.
b) Jupiters magnetic field and the conductivity of Europa detected by Gallileo probe suggests that there's saltwater present
c) Until the last few decades, no one imagined that life could exist in the abyss of ocean with no light source. Instead, we found that life teemed around vents and other "non-organic" life sources. What really was rewritten was that energy need not come from the sun, but could come from the very minerals we don't think twice about as we walk on them and that animals could live off that.

And yes, the radiation would help. I remember reading about how most life on Earth can change form with very little changes in DNA. Having lots of radiation present can certainly "jump start" the necessary reactions for life to begin on Europa.

My only real wishes before I die is that we can explore Europa and find life or get images of extrasolar planets, since travelling anywhere seems out of the question at the rate we are going.

[Ejukated]

Fuck europa. Methane based life on Titan is where its at.

[Ninajrr]

Wouldn't the ridiculous gravity from Jupiter cause Europa to be more of a slushy than an ice shell?

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Ninajrr

Wouldn't the ridiculous gravity from Jupiter cause Europa to be more of a slushy than an ice shell?

It's frozen at the surface, since there's not much of an atmosphere to speak of, meaning it gets pretty cold.

The supposed liquid water that is hypothesized to be on Europa is under the surface, where the heat from the core getting pressed may be enough to support some liquid.

[Furism]

I can't believe nobody mentioned wormholes. Or Dyson's Spheres, but that's pushing a little too far.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Furism

Dyson's Spheres

I think we've been looking for signs of extraterrestrial life a bit longer than 50 years.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Furism

I can't believe nobody mentioned wormholes. Or Dyson's Spheres, but that's pushing a little too far.

A wormhole is a bit out of our realm of detection at the moment.

[Zennin]

Originally Posted by Eomer

You can't observe a black hole, because of their very nature. You can however observe their effects on their surroundings, such as jets of material shooting out of them, huge amounts of X-rays (which is what Chandra observes), that kind of thing. We've observed that kind of thing tons. Regular old black holes are pretty old hat at this point.

They know exactly where the main blackhole in our galaxy is. And indeed, they've observed thousands of other galaxies' supermassive blackholes.

But again, stars don't automatically always end up as black holes. They can end up brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, magnetars, pulars, there's dozens of unique and interesting things they can end up. My bet is on them having found something like that, some unique and extremely rare post-main phase star.

this ^

except! there are no jets of material shooting OUT of a black hole - NOTHING escapes a black hole, not even light. it is impossible for something to shoot out of a black hole, as far as we are able to understand.

[Schatze]

Hawking disagrees with you.

And he meant the gamma ray bursts caused by the insane forces at work in the accretion disk. I don't disagree with his terminology because you can look at a blackhole as a celestial body which includes the associated phenomenon. Unless specifically referring to the event horizon, Schwartzchild limit, or singularity.

[Eomer]

Yeah, maybe my terminology isn't so hot, but stuff definitely is shot out of blackholes along their axis of rotation. They tend to be messy eaters.

[Phoenix]

Those are called Quasars.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Those are called Quasars.

Those are different things.

Here, have some learning -- Gamma ray burst - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note the picture to the right if you're not so good at the readin.