Voices
living in their own miniature martian spring. No need for the deep
drilling project: life may be right
there for the finding — in damp
dirt. That’s a real game changer.
The other news concerns Europa, the albino ice-ball-of-amoon in orbit around Jupiter.
The Hubble Space Telescope has
found a cloud of what seem to be
dismembered water molecules a
hundred miles or so above Europa’s south pole. The likely scenario here is that liquid is being
spewed into space from the ocean
below as Jupiter pulls and tugs
on Europa’s frozen skin. The geysers seem to be located in cracks
in the surface ice.
Almost a decade ago, Hubble
found watery plumes shooting
out of Saturn’s moon Enceladus,
so this phenomenon isn’t new.
But Enceladus is a runty orb, so
the water erupting from its frigid
epidermis dissipates into the
vacuum of space, and is gone for
good. Europa is a beefier satellite,
and can pull the material shot up
from the cracked-and-crazed polar region back down to pile up
on the surface.
Consequently, if there’s any
life holed up in the Stygian waters beneath Europa’s glisten-
SETH
SHOSTAK
HUFFINGTON
12.22.13
ing exterior, then bits of biology might be just lying in handy
heaps right there on the icy,
south-polar landscape.
It’s good news for mankind,
or at least for that fraction of it
that would be interested to know
if there’s life beyond our world.
For years, astrobiologists have
been speculating on the possibility of finding some sort of small,
squirmy critters on Mars or Eu-
Red Planet residents
were generally assumed
to be similar to us:
size-wise, technology-wise,
and wise-wise.”
ropa. But in neither case did they
have reason to think that the
proof could be found on the surface of these worlds, within easy
robot reach. Now that’s changed.
Carl Sagan once said that
“somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
“Somewhere” may be a landing
spot only a short rocket
ride away.
Seth Shostak is a senior astronomer
at the SETI Institute.