Weird Science Cool Pic of the Week
We're staying with oceans for this one, just one far away - check out Jupiter's moon Europa.
Absolutely stunning.
Discovered by some bloke called Galileo in 1610 (although German astronomer Simon Marius named it), the moon is covered with ice.
This means the little guy's surface is among the brightest in the solar system. It's also real smooth.
The weird patterns you can see are cracks in the crust which have frozen over.
Scientists are almost certain that beneath the frosty surface there's lots of lovely, lovely water, liquid water.
The moon is being heated up its interaction with the massive Jupiter.
Europa's orbit is not circular, sometimes it's close to its parent, sometimes far away.
This results in the moon being 'squeezed' by tidal forces, which in turn heats up the interior. The same forces power the volcanos on Io.
So there's water on Europa (probably). And where there's water, there's life (maybe).
The thought that little critters could be swimming merrily in an ocean so far away from the sun would have been far-fetched a few years ago.
But just like microbes and fish found at the very depths of the Earth, life is a lot more hardy than first thought. It's definitely possible life, probably the teeny-weeny type, is just waiting to be discovered.
We'll have a wait to know for sure.
The Jupiter Europa Orbiter is slated for a 2020 lift-off as part of a NASA/ESA effort to explore the Jovian system.
It will have a real close look before crashing into the moon, coz astronomers love to cause a bang.
And to finish off here's a snapshot of one of the aforementioned volcanic eruptions on Io. Click on the pix for a better view.
Weird Science Factoid: When the queen of a clownfish school dies, a male clownfish changes its gender to become female and takes her place. The queen is dead, long live the kin... I mean queen!
Join the Weird Science Facebook group here, or follow us on Twitter here or by searching for weirdsciblog.
Want to be sent the 'best' of the Weird Sci Blog every month? Then sign up for Weird News - a newsletter containing more info about the subjects we cover, plus some extra stuff that didn't make the blog. Interested? Subscribe by e-mailing wscience@me.com with the title 'count me in' and we'll do the rest.
Older/Newer
« Forget Martians, Mars itself is coming to get us | Kid gets hit by meteorite - and survives »
1 Comments
Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
A person's little curiosity makes a big discovery. So, I it's not impossible that in the future we can find a way to launch into other planet. That's if were still alive. lol Tire Works