Possible water and Forests or Grass on Jupiter's moon Io?

I've been checking out the NASA software World Wind. If you goto Jupiter, you can switch to view the moons. I was checking out Io and noticed how even in the original NASA image, it looks like water and forests or grass and dirt.

If you don't know about World Wind, it's like Google earth, but better. Plus you can view Venus, Mars, Jupiter and the Earth and most of the moons. You can download it yourself and see the same image (the unedited version). worldwind.arc.nasa.gov...

This is an unedited version of Io:


This is the same image with added contrast:


This one I added Hue(color) and Contrast:


**note: I didn't know what forum to put this in. Since this is a crazy theory forum, I thought it might fit. I may be new here, but I do know how mods work. So I'm sure they will move it, if needed. Also, I did search and didn't see anything about this.**


Am I crazy? Or does that look like a Moon full of life? This almost looks like the planet they created with the Genesis project in Star Trek.

There is a lot of green, blue and brown there. Even without the contrast, there are dark green spots that could be forests, and the light green could be grass.

Hey Martianvirus !!!!!!!!

I don't know anymore with these photos. If it has something to with NASA then images are probably modified long before the general public get to see them.
I found a link to a page that shows how the moon would look to human eyes if you were flying by it.
www.lpi.usra.edu...
This moon is noted for heaps of recent volcanic activity hence no craters.
Other images on this site are colour enhanced to allow geologists to identify minerals ect. That will be the official line as to the explanation of your posted pictures. I am still betting there is some crazy stuff to be found on these moons though.

Does Io have vegetation? I think we don't know that at the present, but the things you are seeing are likely either lava flows or chemical flats, i.e., a huge desert of bromide salt. I bet early Earth looked something like this, though.

Just because something looks green, doesn't mean it's grass or trees. Likewise, blue doesn't automatically equal water. You should also find out if your image is true colour or false colour, as well.

Io is heavily volcanic and the yellowish and greenish areas are sulfur. Plus the surface temperature is at about -140 C. The atmosphere is extremely thin and consists mainly of sulfur dioxcide. Not exactly prime conditions for vegitation.

Fair enough. But you also have to realize that everything we know about Io was told to us by NASA. What if they lied about the temperature and everything else? The area of the image where it's blue, has different shades of blue. It looks very similar how areas on earth look like, such as the Caribbean.

It's also a low resolution image that they blew up, so there isn't as much detail there that should be.

I'll point out, that Io is so volcanicly active, and in such a weird orbit with jupiter, that it has a flux current of Electro-magnetic energy running between it and jupiter.

It has been compared with hell, due to most, if not all of its surface being in permanent volcanic upheaval.

Once again, you are using information from NASA. Do you really trust that? How do we really know all this about Io? And even if NASA is telling the truth, what about alien interference? Maybe the aliens have been Tera-forming the solar system and don't want us to know. They could have easily reprogrammed our probes to give back false information.

Or, maybe I am nuts.

Originally posted by martianvirus
What if they lied about the temperature and everything else?

What if they didn't? I agree NASA is likely withholding information and/or releasing disinfo about certain things, but I certainly cannot prove or disprove it. Therefore, information released by NASA is just as likely to be either true or false. Assume nothing!

The area of the image where it's blue, has different shades of blue. It looks very similar how areas on earth look like, such as the Caribbean.

But what does "blue" represent in this image? The wavelength of the visible light spectrum that we see as "blue"? Or could it be something else that is just represented by the color blue?

As my buddy jra posted above, the colors you see in those images do not necessarily represent the colors you would see if you looked at Io from close proximity with the naked eye. NASA uses all kinds of different spectroscopy and imaging methods, so the colors you see may represent mineral content, density, ultra violet reflection, etc. There have been many discussions here at ATS about this - check around in the Space Exploration forum, in threads like "Forest on Mars".

The bottom line is that we don't know what we are looking at in this image - those colors and regions could represent just about anything. The one thing it is most UNLIKELY to be is a true-color image, as if you were there and looking down on Io. Check your sources and try to figure out what this image really is.

[edit on 8/15/2007 by damajikninja]