[HN Gopher] NASA's Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupite... ___________________________________________________________________ NASA's Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter's moon Europa Author : jonathankoren Score : 207 points Date : 2023-09-21 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (webbtelescope.org) (TXT) w3m dump (webbtelescope.org) | grecy wrote: | Can Webb image Europa? | acqq wrote: | The article is very precise: | | "Both teams identified the carbon dioxide using data from the | integral field unit of _Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph_ | (NIRSpec). This instrument mode provides spectra with a | resolution of 200 x 200 miles (320 x 320 kilometers) on the | surface of Europa, which has a diameter of 1,944 miles, | allowing astronomers to determine where specific chemicals are | located. " | | Wikipedia article about the NIRSpec: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIRSpec | svachalek wrote: | Yes, the NIRCam images in the article are from the Webb | telescope. | eganist wrote: | > Can Webb image Europa? | | The implication by the presence of "Europa Carbon Dioxide | Distribution" (NIRCam and NIRSpec IFU) images on the NASA | release is that yes, it can. | icapybara wrote: | There's an image of Europa from Webb in the article. | SoftTalker wrote: | It's less clear than I'd expected. Is that image deliberately | downscaled so as to not reveal the true capabilities of the | telescope optics? | flangola7 wrote: | Not reveal the true capabilities? Is this an RPG reference? | acqq wrote: | It's as designed: | | "Both teams identified the carbon dioxide using data from | the integral field unit of Webb's Near-Infrared | Spectrograph (NIRSpec). This instrument mode provides | spectra with a resolution of 200 x 200 miles (320 x 320 | kilometers) on the surface of Europa, which has a diameter | of 1,944 miles" | dylan604 wrote: | Only if your IP address has been listed as suspicious. For | the rest of us, we see an non-manipulated image. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | Webb has two main instruments and one of them is not very | high resolution (but I think it's the one that gets good | spectral data). When you browse the raw Webb images on the | nasa website you see a mix of high res and low res images | and they are each attributed to one of the two instruments. | baggy_trough wrote: | No, moons are not very big. | dwaltrip wrote: | No, I doubt it. | | Europa is fairly small and very far away. | | For reference, the best photos we had of Pluto prior to the | fly-by were from the Hubble telescope, and were even | grainier. | dotnet00 wrote: | You can probably even find the raw data for the image on | one of NASA's sites soon if not already available. This | isn't a spy satellite where there's a strategic need to | hide the capabilities of the optics. If anything, it's more | valuable to show off the capabilities because of how it's | somewhat of a prestige project. | mlyle wrote: | In addition to moons being big and far away, the specific | instrument here (a spectrograph) is not very high | resolution-- at least spatially. For each "pixel", it | measures the brightness of many wavelengths of light. | Larrikin wrote: | Is this post trying to imply they found aliens and are | hiding them? | wantoncl wrote: | No, just some black monoliths on the surface ;) | LeifCarrotson wrote: | No, they're quite open about the capabilities of the optics | (see https://webb.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqScienti | sts.ht...). It's just that Europa is very far away. | | Webb's mirror system has an angular resolution of about 0.1 | arcseconds. Earth is currently about 630 million km from | Europa (Webb is only 1.5 million km away from earth). | Because the sine of theta is approximately equal to theta | for values of theta near zero, you can get the diameter of | a 0.1 arcsecond cone at x km from Earth by multiplying by | 0.00000485 = sin(2pi/360 _3600). | | 0.1 _ 0.00000485 * 630000000 = 305 km | | The article says the pixels are about 320 km, so the math | works out pretty close (for astronomy). | | Those magnificent images of black holes and galaxies that | are way more distant, but also way _way_ bigger. This isn | 't downscaled when you compare it to gorgeous, sharper | images like those at [1], a 340 _light-year_ wide multi- | image mosaic of the Tarantula Nebula, which is "only" | 161000 light years away, that width is 1/500th the distance | and Europa's width is 1/20,000th the distance. | | In space, intuition about distances that you've built up | from using your eyeballs on human-scale terrestrial objects | just doesn't work, you've got to do the math. | | [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/a-cosmic- | tarantula... | superhumanuser wrote: | This reply is why I love the audience on HN. Thank you | for your detailed comment. | grecy wrote: | Thanks for the detailed comment, that is incredibly | helpful info. | jonplackett wrote: | I wish every website I visited had comments of this | quality... | philomath_mn wrote: | For the conspiracy theorists: this is the same reason why | we can't just point Webb at the moon and get pictures of | the lunar landing sites. In terms of arcseconds of the | Webb's FOV, the moon landing site is much smaller than | these distant galaxies (which blows my mind just how big | those distant "objects" are). | ceejayoz wrote: | We can image the lunar landing sites with lunar orbiters, | though. Footsteps and all! | | https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo- | sites.htm... | philomath_mn wrote: | Right -- they are a bit closer than Webb :D | colechristensen wrote: | No. JWST is not a spy satellite. Everybody gets the images | as measured. Different instruments have different | resolutions. | Electricniko wrote: | As others have said, you're looking at the image. We'll have to | wait for a bit before we get some really good images of Europa. | From Google: | | NASA's Europa Clipper is the first dedicated mission to explore | a world with a global ocean, other than Earth. The spacecraft | is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and will arrive at | Europa in 2030. The mission will study Europa's surface and | interior to determine if it has the ingredients to support | life. The spacecraft will make about 50 close flybys of Europa | while orbiting Jupiter. | | Also see some of the images from Juno if you want a better look | at the moon. | perfect-blue wrote: | I'm not sure, it's the sensor that worries me. The sensor isn't | even big enough to image uranus. | poopbutt7 wrote: | Is the significance of CO2's presence 1) it's necessary | ingredient for (our) life, 2) it's a likely biproduct of life, or | both? | gpm wrote: | Note that mars's atmosphere has more CO2 in it (per unit | volume! Despite having almost no atmosphere) than Earth's does. | Definitely not 2. | TeMPOraL wrote: | The first one. It can be produced through non-biological | processes and is fairly stable, but is also necessary for "life | as we know it". | | Gaseous oxygen would be 2 - it's highly reactive, so if you | detect it in an atmosphere, it means there must be some kind of | activity going on that replenishes it. On Earth, it's what life | does. | analog31 wrote: | A rapid change in CO2 concentration could be a clue that | something such as life is rearranging the molecules on a | planet. In fact, I think the aliens have been monitoring us | with a spectrometer for a few million years, and have guessed | that we're here. | [deleted] | dmix wrote: | > a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid | water--possibly twice as much as in all of Earth's oceans | combined. | | If we brought water back a container of water from Europa would | this be the largest amount of new water entering the earth since | planets struck it billions of years ago? | | I briefly googled it (I dont know much about this stuff tbh): | | > The water on our Earth today is the same water that's been here | for nearly 5 billion years. So far, we haven't managed to create | any new water, and just a tiny fraction of our water has managed | to escape out into space. The only thing that changes is the form | that water takes as it travels through the water cycle. | | Anyway interesting thought experiment. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Comets do fall from time to time, and Earth collects 5000 tons | of debri from space each year. So I imagine Earth does gain a | few tons of water from time to time. | dmix wrote: | Oh good point, I didn't think about Comets. | tracedddd wrote: | Don't commercial hydrogen fuel cells create water as a | byproduct? | biggestlou wrote: | I'm still looking for intelligent life on _this_ planet! | monlockandkey wrote: | Europa is definitely the most exciting part of the solar system | that sparks imagination. Literally 100s of miles of pitch black | ocean with thermal vents, ripe for life. Getting kiddy thinking | about the leviathan sized aliens roaming the deep ocean of | Europa. Does anyone else feel this way? | yakz wrote: | Could you have leviathan sized animals with no phytoplankton? | Seems like thermal vents would provide a lot less energy than | the Sun, but I'm really out of my depth. | lisper wrote: | > Could you have leviathan sized animals with no | phytoplankton? | | Yes. See e.g.: | | https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/how- | giant... | | These aren't "leviathan-sized" but they could easily provide | food for something that big. The base of this food chain | would be chemosynthetic bacteria. After that, energy is not | the limiting factor on size. | sigg3 wrote: | Well technically they would just be Europeans. | seventytwo wrote: | _Technically_ , they'd be Europans. ;p | ekaryotic wrote: | Are you sure, I think they would be called Europaeans. | v4dok wrote: | To solve your dillema as a Greek. Both the continent and | the planet have the same name. Europeans it is. | [deleted] | johnchristopher wrote: | Europa Report (movie): | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avzqYgtpdMQ I enjoyed it ^^ | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Great film with the suspense and tension of Aliens. | wishfish wrote: | Don't forget about Enceladus. Also a massive ocean with the | added benefit of shooting enormous geysers into space. Would be | wonderful if our solar system had at least 3 worlds with ocean | life. | | https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/enceladus | xwdv wrote: | Wondering if we could eat fish born on Europa and if there | would be any ill effects. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | From an Arthur C. Clarke novel: | | > ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. | | > ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. | | So yes. Clarke thought it was special also. | XorNot wrote: | It's also one of my favorite sequences in the 2010 movie of | Space Odessey series (which IMO, works a lot better as an | actual movie pacing wise). Just something about the tension | gets captured really well there, without their being any sort | of actual threat (since it's a robotic probe). | slg wrote: | This is obviously a ginormous leap from this announcement and | just a tangent sparked by it. The possibility of intelligent life | developing on a world like Europa encrusted with what is | effectively a miles think solid atmosphere has always been one of | my favorite feasible sci-fi hypotheticals. Could you imagine how | that would impact their culture? Would they even know there is | anything on the other side of the ice? Them finding out about us | would be even more world shattering them us finding out about | them. | jonathankoren wrote: | Apparently the ring builders in The Expanse books were | supposedly squids from an ice encrusted planet/moon. | | It is an odd idea of how they'd even discover it. Assuming | their natural habitat is a thermal vent on the ocean floor, | they'd need pressure suits or probes to travel up to shell. | Then they'd need to essentially create a Kola Superdeep | Borehole in the sky, and there's no obvious reason to do that, | especially since drilling down into rock would be easier, and | certainly more lucrative. (ie there aren't any valuable | materials in ice). This is assuming they don't discover a 15 km | deep fissure, which seems unlikely because I don't think | individual fissures discovered are that deep, all fissures are | transitory, and probably randomly distributed. Sure a seismic | network in the sky would could find evidence of fissures, but | why are you building a seismic network in the sky? | sbierwagen wrote: | It would be hard to tell if the rest of the universe even | existed. No electromagnetic radiation or cosmic rays are | going to make it through the ice. They'd have to get all the | way to neutrino telescopes or gravity wave detectors to sense | anything outside their ocean, and why would they spend the | resources? Humanity could _see_ our moon and it still took us | thousands of years to get there. | | Really they'd only do it if they managed indefinite | population growth without poisoning their biosphere with | waste products, and had to mine out the ice shell just for | more living space. That would be tough: the equivalent would | be if every square meter of the Earth's surface, including | oceans, was as densely populated as Manhattan. That gets us | up to 14 trillion people. Now make every building 10 km tall. | jl6 wrote: | The relevant sci-fi is the planet of Krikkit from the 3rd | Hitch-Hikers book, _Life, the Universe, and Everything_. On | that world, life evolved under a permanent blanket of cloud. At | no point did they ever see the stars, or think that there might | be something of interest above them. Until one day they sent up | a rocket which penetrated the dust cloud, and for the first | time they became aware of the rest of the universe. | | Their response? "It'll have to go." | finite_depth wrote: | [dead] | johnchristopher wrote: | Have you seen the movie Europa Report ^^ ? | [deleted] | [deleted] | adolph wrote: | I don't want to spoil anything but intelligent life that | evolves under high pressure depth is explored in Project Hail | Mary by Any Weir (author of recent popular culture book then | movie The Martian). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary | | https://www.amazon.com/Project-Hail-Mary-Andy-Weir/dp/059313... | abracadaniel wrote: | For comparison, the furthest we've dug down is about 8 miles, | and Europa's ice crust is estimated to be 10-15 miles. So, yeah | that would be like us getting discovered by mole people from | nearly twice the depth we're capable of reaching. It's fun to | think about what a civilization on Europa would think about | their world. You can go up, but it gets colder and the pressure | gets lower. It'd be like trying to go to space, but you have to | dig to get there. Perhaps the change in density would make any | such upward drilling unstable and beyond their means. | sgt wrote: | No need to dig, you just melt yourself downwards. It's not | exactly like digging through rocks on Earth. | superhumanuser wrote: | Would liquid pool up as you melt the ice? I guess you'd | need to pump it out. Is that even possible at that depth? | The liquid might boil on the way up. | mrguyorama wrote: | Your craft is denser than the liquid, so you just kinda | drop through it and keep melting. | evrimoztamur wrote: | Doesn't the heat you have to produce increase as you go | deeper? | abracadaniel wrote: | In this case, the digging is from the perspective of a | Europan living under the ice, and having to dig to go up. | AuryGlenz wrote: | Of course, barring collapse, the rocks won't reform right | above you as you go. | sgt wrote: | I wonder if one can apply some heat to the cable or wire | dropping you down, and thus create a more open conduit. | [deleted] | dylan604 wrote: | What's the pressure like at that depth? That seems like it | would have some implications to be dealt with | hermitcrab wrote: | IIRC the pressure at the bottom of Europa's theorized ocean | in similar to at the bottom of earth's ocean. The greater | depth is compensated by the lower graviation field. | yegle wrote: | Oh this reminds me of Cixin Liu's (of the Three Body Problem | fame) short scifi Mountain. | | It describes an alien species that lives in the mantle of a | planet. Their explorer finally dug through to the crust, when | they were met with never before seen liquid water that | instantly kills them as well as their (non water proof) | equipments. | | Fascinating short story. | micromacrofoot wrote: | An aside, but hovering over the image only to have it obscured... | and then _smaller_ on click, is a little comical. | whoisthemachine wrote: | And then if you click on "Expand" (after clicking on the click | which makes it smaller), it is restored to its original size. | spookie wrote: | We might have discovered carbon below 10km of ice on another | celestial body, but we still cannot make sense of magic | smoke. | [deleted] | wsinks wrote: | I'm glad you posted this - I went back just to see this and | gave an audible laugh. More than a little comical! | steve1977 wrote: | "All these worlds are yours - except Europa. | | Attempt no landing there." | | You have been warned guys... ;) | [deleted] | CuteDinosaur wrote: | What is this quote from? | ikesau wrote: | 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001: A Space | Odyssey | CuteDinosaur wrote: | Seems pretty. Will read soon. | twoodfin wrote: | The film version is flawed but still well-worth anyone's | time who got this deep in the thread & enjoys hard, near- | future sci-fi. | | My theory is that _2010: The Year We Make Contact_ is a | lot like _Blade Runner_ , pre- the various Ridley Scott | re-cuts. | | Drop the voiceover, tweak the ending to be less literal / | sentimental, fix some of the FX matting, and you'd be | left with one of the best serious SF films since _2001_. | [deleted] | [deleted] | spazx wrote: | Use them together. Use them in peace. | tunnuz wrote: | Came for this, was not disappointed. | sph wrote: | Honestly, the only thing I wish to see before I die is a | submarine mission to Europa or Ganymede. It would be even more | mind blowing and an amazing achievement for humanity, and the | search for extraterrestrial life. | | That, and the dragonfly-helicopter-thing on Titan. Have you | ever seen the Sun set on a methane lake? | | It's time for a rewatch of Europa Report (2013). | dylan604 wrote: | I'm ready for beach front property when Jupiter finally | becomes the Sun's companion star to warm up Europa | dotnet00 wrote: | It's such a shame that the lander component of Europa Clipper | got cancelled. | TeMPOraL wrote: | It did?! :(. | | Shame. We should be scrambling to land probes there | yesterday. | dotnet00 wrote: | Yep, yet another casualty of Congress's obsession with | wasting money on SLS. Spending another $10B on an SLS | upgrade that is still too rough of a ride for any payload | is fine, but spending $1B on a lander is too much. | | With Europa Clipper there was also the incident that | Congress tried to write into law that it had to launch on | SLS. The Clipper team were leaning towards using Falcon | Heavy ($90M). In the end Congress only relented because | the Clipper team said they'd need another $1B in funding | (in addition to the $2B+ for an SLS launch itself) to | make the delicate instruments on Clipper capable of | withstanding the extremely rough ride that SLS offers. | | So now Europa Clipper will be a Jupiter orbiter that does | several flybys of Europa. | mikeInAlaska wrote: | A Europa submarine mission is a good bucket list, but don't | sell us too short. | | * Humans on Mars * Room temperature Superconductors and their | effects on humanity. * Sustained Fusion Power for the masses. | * General Artificial Intelligence * Human brain-computer | interface. * Full reversal of climate change. * Extended | human lifespan. * Curing all forms of cancer. * Universal | translator for all human languages. * Discovery of | extraterrestrial intelligent life. * Understanding dark | energy and dark matter. * A true virtual reality, | indistinguishable from reality. * 100% renewable energy | global infrastructure. * Establishing a lunar base. * | Sentient AI companions. * Discovering the origin of life. | | If you elect me, I will make all these come true! | throw_pm23 wrote: | About half of these I don't care for, but the submarine | mission would be cool. | adzm wrote: | > Universal translator for all human languages. | | We are pretty much already there, though there is room to | improve, it's an amazing accomplishment though that I think | we take for granted. | dmix wrote: | I would like to see a solar gravitational lens telescope | built in space to look at distant exoplanets with the | highest resolution possible. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens | | although last time I brought this up on HN someone | explained to me it'd be very expensive, need to be huge, | and it'd likely only point at one planet per lens, and the | image would still be pretty blurry :( | | > 2020, NASA physicist Slava Turyshev presented his idea of | direct multi-pixel imaging and spectroscopy of an exoplanet | with a solar gravitational lens mission. The lens could | reconstruct the exoplanet image with ~25 km-scale surface | resolution in 6 months of integration time, enough to see | surface features and signs of habitability. His proposal | was selected for the Phase III of the NIAC 2020 (NASA | Institute for Advanced Concepts). Turyshev proposes to use | realistic-sized solar sails (~16 vanes of 103 m2) to | achieve the needed high velocity at perihelion (~150 | km/sec), reaching 547 AU in 17 years. | | https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase | _... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-21 23:00 UTC)