Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Is there life on Europa, Jupiter's largest moon?


Europa, Jupiter's largest moon, may have all the right ingredients for life. 
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

This is the closest "living" place outside the earth. It has water, in fact an enormous amount 150 km deep and covered by an icy crust as thick as 15 km. From the geysers and cracks, sodium chloride, the common salt of the earth's ocean, has been detected together with other elements and compounds that convince scientists that Europa is a suitable host to life. How heat is generated to maintain its interior a watery mass and perhaps warm, is by the gravitational flexing by its sister moons as they pass, a principle called tidal heating.

Europa has a size approximately that of our moon.  The brown shade is sulfur dusts which drifted from volcanic eruption on its sister moons. 

Europa was discovered on 8 January 1610 by Galileo Galilei, and possibly independently by Simon Marius. It is named after a Phoenician noblewoman in Greek mythology, Europa, who was courted by Zeus and became the queen of Crete.~
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Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe: extraterrestrial life and life on Earth. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our Solar System and habitable planets outside our Solar System, the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry, laboratory and field research into the origins and early evolution of life on Earth, and studies of the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in outer space. Astrobiology addresses the question of whether life exists beyond Earth, and how humans can detect it if it does. The term exobiology is similar but more specific — it covers the search for life beyond Earth, and the effects of extraterrestrial environments on living things. (Wikipedia)

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