The Moon, Europa And Mars

The White House has included something in the 2016 budget that surprised some people. It is $30,000,000 for a mission to Europa. Europa is a moon of Jupiter which is believed to have water covering it, which is under a thick crust of ice. For years many scientists have thought the moon Europa would be a good place to explore for extraterrestrial life. Missions have been spoken about and discussed which would send a probe which would drill through the ice and go into the water and be submarine like. There is a theory life exists throughout the cosmos and much of it may be very similar. The reason for this theory is the belief that spores, or molecules float through space and are responsible for creating life and these same spores or molecules land on all the planets. If this is true we might have a chance of finding fish in the water of Europa. Researchers believe the water on Europa means there is a very good chance for life.

One of the things scientists want to measure is how salty the water is. I think it is very interesting how they intend to tell this. It is not by any method you might think and especially not by taking a sample. They intend to do it by measuring the moon’s magnetic field. You might wonder how this could possibly tell anything about the water’s salt content so let me explain. The more salt in the water the better the water conducts electricity. That is why they are going to measure the magnetic field. One of the things the mission will determine is where is the best place to send the future probe which will land on the planet and melt or dig through the ice, so the submersible component of the probe can search for life. Here is the problem in a nutshell, money. Billions of dollars will be needed to send the lander, digger and underwater craft to this moon. It is really a project which should be shared by the major powers including Russia, but as we know current events do not point to this happening.

A new study out of the University of Toronto, Canada suggests we may have gotten it wrong with our opinion on exoplanets and they may be more hospitable to life. It was found a planet’s atmosphere can effect a planet’s spin and alter its climate. Scientists thought most exoplanets always had one hemisphere facing their stars. This is called synchronous rotation. The study shows there is a large number of exoplanets which are not in synchronous rotation. It is now believed the planet’s atmospheres force day and night cycles making these planets much more similar to earth. Days and nights could last much longer on these planets than earth and I presume some might be shorter.

There are still a few scientists who believe intelligent life is very rare in the universe. They believe this because they feel that there are so many paths life could take that the path to intelligent life is not well traveled. Professor Brian Cox has said single-cell life like bacteria thrived for billions of years on earth before the first multi-cellular organism evolved and he believes that only happened once and it was a fluke. He also feels if the dinosaurs had not become extinct we wouldn’t be here today. He went on to say dinosaurs were around for almost 190 million years and never became smart. I think he means intelligent. His conclusion is intelligent life was very unlikely to happen and it was so chancy and so complicated and events had to be just perfect, that it could not have happened again. It is obvious that most other scientists do not feel this way. Professor Cox has said his limit on life is only for this galaxy. Maybe the best way to put this is intelligent life is so rare in his opinion it might only occur once in a galaxy.

German students have put forth a plan to make Mars a planet with a breathable atmosphere. There have been a lot of plans put forward in this vein, but the student’s plan is biological, which is unusual. The leader of the German students is Robert P. SchrΓ¶der. The students believe we should send cyanobacteria to Mars and that would terraform the planet. The earth is full of cyanobactera and they live here in conditions where nothing else could survive. The students have named their plan Cyano Knights. “Because of the long history of those Cyanos and their will to survive I named it Cyano Knights and sent the payload proposal instantly to Mars One,” SchrΓ¶der said. The idea is for the bacteria to send oxygen into the atmosphere via photosynthesis while they absorb C02. Mars is said to have about 96% of its atmosphere filled with C02. As this happens it is believed more organisms will appear and survive. It is not known yet exactly how much bacteria would be required to start this project. One has to wonder while this seems practical if some other unexpected result is possible.

Scientists and entrepreneurs are now thinking very seriously about the riches of the moon. We know we can get there and travel to the moon is getting cheaper. China has been quoted as saying they intend to eventually mine on the moon. A Texas company named Shackleton Energy Company has stated it intends to mine water ice on the moon and convert it into rocket propellant (hydrogen and oxygen) and sell it to space partners in low Earth orbit. The company believes they could sell this fuel much cheaper than having to bring it up from Earth. China wants to establish a base on the moon similar to the ones in the North Pole and South Pole on Earth. One of the most important finds on the moon has to be Helium-3. The reason for this is Helium-3 could power the Earth creating nuclear fusion and generate vast amounts of electricity without the risks run by using current nuclear generating plants. Helium-3 won’t generate harmful radioactive by-products.
Some scientists now believe the surface of the moon could have meteors from Earth on it and these meteors might contain fossils. Tests were conducted and it was found the idea of meteors from Earth landing on the moon is very possible. Remember we find meteors from Mars on the Earth.