Juno what? Jovian moon Europa is looking rugged

NASA's Juno probe had a close encounter with the Jovian moon Europa on September 29 and this week the space agency released the highest resolution photograph ever taken of its icy crust. Europa has captured the imagination of scientists as there is theoretical consensus that the moon's frozen shell harbors a vast salty ocean …

[Dizzy Dwarf]

The three decimal places here are critical

780 million km is 5571428571428.571 Linguine

[Eclectic Man]

Water, water everywhere

"Europa has captured the imagination of scientists as there is theoretical consensus that the moon's frozen shell harbors a vast salty ocean beneath – one that potentially has twice as much water than Earth's oceans combined. This is despite the fact that Jupiter's moon is only 25 percent of the diameter of Earth."

A recent APOD showed the amount of water on Earth:

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220926.html

If Europa is 1/4 the diameter of the Earth, if it is basically a vast ball of water surrounded by ice, it could hold much more water than the Earth.

Excited to see what further imaging of Europa shows.

[werdsmith]

Re: Water, water everywhere

Moment of inertia data suggests that it most likely has a differentiated metallic core and a silicate mantle.

[alain williams]

Did they spot ...

a little island to the west that is splitting off from the rest of the planet ?

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: Did they spot ...

Or the featureless black wall.

[Martin J Hooper]

Can we get the water back here?

If there is that much more water compared to Earth can we get it back here??

I'm guessing not with the tech we have today but who knows in the future...

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

I think there's mileage in tipping icebergs out of *Saturn's* ring system and lobbing them Mars-wards. It'll take a while, but I bet they can fill Mars' atmosphere faster than disassociated hydrogen departs.

[Martin J Hooper]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

Never thought have hitting Mars with it rather than here...

That would be a better use of said water I'm sure! How sure though are we that what happened to the original water on Mars won't happen again??

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

Nothing. It will happen again, but the timescales involved are many orders of magnitude beyond anything that would matter to us.

[Filippo]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

It will happen again, but the timescales mean it's not a real problem. Just lob another ice comet at it every thousand years or so.

[Dizzy Dwarf]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

And just miss Venus. Splash some of that excess atmosphere away.

[midgepad]

The Martian Way, by

Isaac Asimov.

I'm not sure we've seen the icebergs yet, but they might be there.

[aregross]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

Ummm, I think you missed this part: "The white dots in the image are signatures of penetrating high-energy particles from the severe radiation environment around the moon," NASA added.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Can we get the water back here?

Finish off Florida?

[Neil Barnes]

some other essential building blocks

If there's water there, then hydrogen is surely there too. Unless they've changed something since my A-level chemistry all those years ago.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: some other essential building blocks

Indeed - and, to us right-pondians, it should be

"carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur[sulphur]"

S + O₂ ---> icon

[tiggity]

Re: some other essential building blocks

@Fruit and Nutcase

Unfortunately the official IUPAC name is sulfur, so when I worked in science (before switch to IT) any references made to sulphur published content the institution produced, even articles written solely for UK consumption, would use sulfur as the internationally accepted name

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: some other essential building blocks

+1 Understood

[Roj Blake]

Re: some other essential building blocks

And for once it's not all one-way traffic - Americans are meant to spell aluminium with the second i.

[genghis_uk]

Re: some other essential building blocks

While we are picking tran-Atlantic holes, a 'quarter note' is a Crotchet.

Although the author must have meant a Quaver (eighth note for the USians) if you look at the tail*

(*OK, it should be on the other side before a fellow pedant chips in)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: some other essential building blocks

(*OK, it should be on the other side before a fellow pedant chips in)

it's probably in selfie cam mode.

[werdsmith]

Re: some other essential building blocks

Irradiation from the Jovian system splits the water molecules, so oxygen too.

[midgepad]

CHON

With traces of, indeed, sulphur etc, is the basic recipe.

[werdsmith]

Re: CHON

Sulfur probably implanted as sulfur ions on the trailing hemisphere by the co-rotating Jovian magnetosphere, then processed into different states by further irradiation.

[A Nother Handle]

A Pareidoliac's Paradise

I can already see a pentagram, the Illuminati's eye in the pyramid, the Angel of Death, a Thargoid base and Offler the crocodile god.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: A Pareidoliac's Paradise

Looked like some chav was doing doughnuts in a Fiesta Hatchback too.

[DS999]

"Until 2025 or whenever the spacecraft stops functioning"

Given how NASA builds these things, we will probably be getting good science from it until well into the 2030s.

[First Light]

Roadworks

What I want to know is who built all the highways?

[Dizzy Dwarf]

Re: Roadworks

Intelligences vast and cool and unsympathetic.

Envious eyes, drawing up plans, etc.

Luckily the chances are a million to one.

[Martin J Hooper]

Re: Roadworks

I was hoping for a 2001 reference but a War of the Worlds one will do just as well... :)

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Roadworks

Bloody hell, a million to one you say? Those come across 9 times out of 10!

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Roadworks

Is there a Cones Hotline?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cones_Hotline

[werdsmith]

I studied Europa Galileo data, including images from the SSI camera and these pictures are amazing. Completely amazing.

[werdsmith]

We may have to wait almost 10 years for the Clipper and JUICE missions to see how accurate these enhancement are.

[RobThBay]

Coloring?

Oh.... colouring...

[M.V. Lipvig]

Looks like

highways and pipelines to me, and if you zoom in really really close you can see little cars.

[DJV]

Re: Looks like

I kept looking for the little yellow man to drag and drop in order to put it into Streetview mode.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

We have been given a new lease and a warning from the landlord.

'ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.'

[TeeCee]

...The image captures about 93 miles (150 kilometers) by 125 miles (200 kilometers)...

Which makes the footprint on the right about 50 miles in length.

I can haz conspirissy, yes?

[Version 1.0]

Check Google for information about Europa

"The entire surface of Europa is almost completely covered with a solid sheet of ice. It was discovered, in 2010, by the crew of the ill-fated Chinese spacecraft Tsien, who reported that there was life beneath the ice, living in a previously undiscovered sub-surface ocean." ... gosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Giant frozen water balloon

Some Titan juvenile threw it at Jupiter but missed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for halloween

did anyone mention the face in the top left corner? He's a scary dude.