---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 22:51:48 -0600 (MDT)
From: Ryan R. Snyder <rye@denver.net>
To: w00f@ism.net
Subject: w00f: Scientists Confident of Life on Jupiter Moon
Wednesday April 9 11:38 PM EDT
Scientists Confident of Life on Jupiter Moon
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuter) - Space scientists said Wednesday they were
confident life existed in the muddy waters of
one of Jupiter's moons.
"I am sure there's life there," John Delaney of the University of
Washington said in a reference to the Jovian moon
Europa. Delaney and the other experts spoke at a news briefing detailing
results of pictures from the Galileo probe.
Pictures of Europa sent back by Galileo after its closest flyby of the
moon in February and released by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration Wednesday showed a red-colored sea
with a crust of ice about three feet thick in
which huge icebergs several miles across were floating, the scientists
said.
The images were taken as Galileo was 363 miles from Europa.
Talking to reporters at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the scientists
said they believed all the ingredients for creating
and sustaining life forms existed in Europa's waters.
Delaney, a professor of oceanology, said he and other scientists believed
the waters under the ice crust were being
warmed by volcanic activity and undersea research on Earth had shown that
"volcanic activity supports life without
sunlight."
Richard Terrile of the JPL, a planetary scientist, said he believed there
was organic matter in sediment at the bottom of
Europa's ocean and pointed out: "On Earth, these same ingredients in a
million years gave presence to life."
Terrile said he would like to see a "machine exploration" of Europa
during a future unmanned probe to the moon in the
hope of confirming his beliefs.
Delaney said he was "very excited" by Galileo's pictures. "The bottom
line is, it's about life. The discovery of life on
another planet will surpass anything that has ever taken place in human
history," he said.
He added that volcanic activity not only sustained life but encouraged
it, saying when a volcano erupted under the ocean
on Earth it caused bacteria to "bloom at a massive level."
In an effort to bolster their life-in-outer-space theory, scientists and
engineers from around the world were meeting in
Pasadena on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss an exploration of Lake
Vostok, a subglacial lake under the ice in
Antarctica which they believe has conditions similar to Europa's sea.
Michael Carr of the United States Geological Survey said there was
evidence of movement and rotation by the icebergs
which could not be explained by wind as Europa is in a vacuum. "The
plausible cause for this motion is traction below
which implies liquid below.
Dr Paul Geissler of the University of Arizona said the pictures showed
the sea as a red-brown area on the surface of
Europa. He speculated that the red-brown material in the waters indicated
it was a "muddy sea," while Max Coon, a
scientist with NorthWest Research Associates, Inc., concluded after
studying the pictures that, "The ice features here (on
Earth) look very, very like the ones on Europa."
Oceanographer Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute said he
believed Europa was still developing and
the ice crust was about one million years old, "a mere day in geological
terms."
The scientists, who make up the Galileo imaging team and whose task it is
to interpret the pictures and data sent back
from the spacecraft, also said it appeared that the ice crust was slowly
melting because of the warmer waters below
which were being heated by volcanic activity.
Galileo was launched by the shuttle Atlantis in October, 1989 and arrived
at Jupiter to begin its exploration of the planet
and its moons in December of 1995.
--- Ryan R. Snyder rye@denver.net Internet Specialist "You will find that the state is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too." -John Kenneth Galbraith