Water plumes over Europa |
Water plumes over Europa |
Dec 12 2013, 04:55 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 5-January 07 From: Manchester England Member No.: 1563 |
This seems like the relevant place to post this (could be wrong): Water plumes from Europa? Apologies if it's already been up. The link to the Science article at the bottom doesn't work for me, does anyone have a working link to the original? Cheers.
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Dec 12 2013, 08:32 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 5-January 07 From: Manchester England Member No.: 1563 |
Here's a link to the paper. http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2013/55/pdf.pdf Thank you! Moderator note: Two topics merged. Quote added at the top of this post to make its context clear. -------------------- |
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Dec 12 2013, 09:27 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
The modeled density is comparable to that of plumes at Enceladus. Campaigns to observe plumes over Europa visually failed, which may indicate simply the transience of such activity, although the schedule of the transience becomes extremely interesting. If there is outgassing at some point during every (or nearly every) orbit, then any jovian orbiter with Europa flybys could observe the plume in situ, if the tour is designed appropriately. If the outgassing is rarer, or unpredictable, then that makes in situ observation a challenge.
An extraordinarily interesting possibility here is that the source of Europa's plumes may involve water in contact with a sub-surface ocean floor, which could make the chemistry arbitrarily complex, whereas some models of Enceladus's plumes indicate that the source may be surrounded by more ice on all sides, which limits the possible chemistry. The lens-melt model of Europa's ice argues that the evidence of surface/melt-through contact occurs between lakes of water which are not in direct contact with the ocean, but exist between the ocean and the top of the ice. This would be of greater interest if the ice that melted to form those lakes had been part of the ocean previously (especially if they were in contact recently). The proposals for the Europa Clipper mission include a neutral mass spectrometer making flybys of <1000 km to sample the Europa atmosphere. The new discovery, and follow ups, may suggest a different trajectory, but that instrument is already part of the package. The proposals suggest a launch of 2021 or 2022, although that seems tentative. The possibility of a free-return trajectory sample return bringing some of these plumes to Earth is extremely exciting. A sample return from Europa's surface would be very challenging. The free-return option is much, much more modest in terms of delta-v. |
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Dec 12 2013, 11:38 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 613 Joined: 23-February 07 From: Occasionally in Columbia, MD Member No.: 1764 |
An extraordinarily interesting possibility here is that the source of Europa's plumes may involve water in contact with a sub-surface ocean floor, which could make the chemistry arbitrarily complex, whereas some models of Enceladus's plumes indicate that the source may be surrounded by more ice on all sides, which limits the possible chemistry. But for the chemistry to be interesting, there must be available carbon. There is little evidence of any on Europa, and models of the protojovian nebula have it too hot to incorporate much. So yeah, if sulphates are your thing, then Europa is demonstrably great. Prebiotic chemistry may be a very different matter. |
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Dec 13 2013, 03:31 AM
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#5
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
So yeah, if sulphates are your thing, then Europa is demonstrably great. Prebiotic chemistry may be a very different matter. Which is one of the very reasons Europa might be so interesting. At absolute worst it might all be hydrothermal vents and energy, with no organics. Compare/contrast with Titan: abuncha cool-o organics, but no obvious hydrothermal system to throw in energy. (proposed in one model, but not yet observed.) And sulfur/sulfates iron(II)/iron(III) are excellent start points. Anywhere there is a chemical disequilibrium is exciting. -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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