Life on Europa?

Europa fascinates me, because apparantly it has a warm sea deep under its crust, heated by the core. The is very interesting because when you combine warmth with water, interesting things happen. I believe in the next 10-20 years they're aiming to send a probe up there to 'drill' into it and see what they find. Wouldn't it be nifty if they found some fish-like creatures? I anxiously await further news on this.

[edit on 9-3-2007 by Gooey]

Wow, that's interesting.

It would be so neat if they could try and preserve the little creatures and breed them here and see how they react with the animals on earth. We could have like .. new, creepy, hybrid fish! Fun stuff.

Indeed it would. As long as they did it in contained areas.....Wouldn't want any 'super-duper-bad-ass-fish-killing-virus-thing' to come from one of them and cause a bunch of havoc lol. If it was safe, though, I'd make sure to get one and name it Ernie

life can survive in extreme conditions, so if their is liquid water their its almost impossible that their isnt some sort of living organisum swimming around!

Good point, but then the question comes....If its down that deep, how would it get there from the begining? I guess the core could have created something, but I'm not sure how it would be able to get down there.

What we would have on Europa would clearly be Snorks.
Snorks that could be millions of years old and travel in the saucers that we see plunging in and out of our own oceans. Yes, Snorks......

Originally posted by Gooey
Europa fascinates me, because apparantly it has a warm sea deep under its crust, heated by the core.

Well, it has a liquid ocean of water underneat it's icy surface, but warm,
well it would be warm near volcanic vents, but the majority of the ocean
would be pretty cold.

Also, an interesting thing to note, Europas core is active because of tidal
flexing caused by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and the many other
Jupiterian satelites/moons.

The is very interesting because when you combine warmth with water, interesting things happen. I believe in the next 10-20 years they're aiming to send a probe up there to 'drill' into it and see what they find. Wouldn't it be nifty if they found some fish-like creatures? I anxiously await further news on this.

I'm not sure if there are any concrete plans to send a probe there that
would dig through the ice and explore, but there is alot of interest in
doing such a thing.

[edit on 3/12/2007 by iori_komei]

Don't forget Callisto. That's another Jovian satellite theoretically harboring a saline ocean 6 miles deep. It's bigger than Europa (approx the same size as Mercury) but smaller than Ganymede (largest Jovian satellite). I remember reading somewhere tha even Ganymede may have a liquid water subsurface ocean, but I don't think to the extent of Europa or Callisto.





grammar edit

[edit on 12-3-2007 by Stale Cracker]

Did you know that Europa has a strange red tint in the ice cracks which could be from bacterial life. If it is then there could be a whole ecosystem in the sea.