NASA Wants Your Ideas on How to Look for Life on Europa

[Nimcha]

You always get someone like this in these threads, thinking they're being clever by taking the philosophical approach... It's not clever. Life is pretty well defined scientifically.

Hey genius. Science is based on observation...it's definitions and classifications are based on those observations. So riddle me this. What does all life that science has observed so far? Carbon-Based, and they're on earth.

There is no reason to actually believe life that developed on other planets would follow the same pattern

Yes there is. Occam's Razor for one. There is absolutely no reason to believe anything other than carbon-based life requiring water exists. Only carbon-based life has been observed. We know how to look for it. We will look for it on other planets.

Any more questions?

 

[Pinkamena]

A probe that leaves a phone-home antenna topside, and then drills or melts its way through the ice until it's through, all the while unspooling cable up to the antenna. If it successfully finds a way through, it takes water samples and uses a video camera connected to a microscope to look for microbial life. Perhaps also equip it with a spooled weighted sampling tool that can take deeper water samples.

There's only one tiny small problem. The ice is likely many hundreds of kilometers thick.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Send Piers Morgan up on the spaceship with a 2 month oxygen supply and a GoPro camera.

Boom! Video proof of life on Europa

 

[Nergui]

Seriously though. The first thing you have to consider when looking for life is 'Define life' are we talking carbon based oxygen breathers because I don't think they'll find any.

Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate.

No requirement to be carbon-based. Simples.

A probe that leaves a phone-home antenna topside, and then drills or melts its way through the ice until it's through, all the while unspooling cable up to the antenna. If it successfully finds a way through, it takes water samples and uses a video camera connected to a microscope to look for microbial life. Perhaps also equip it with a spooled weighted sampling tool that can take deeper water samples.

This is a good idea. You should draw up the technical specs and submit an entry.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Not obtuse.. just open-minded. I never said you'd have to see atoms or electrons. That was made in reference to the idea of looking for things that move.. Pointed out that there are lots of things that move of their own accord that are not considered alive.

As for those microbes. Yes, they look lovely and chances are microbes on other planets, would look nothing like those.

Yeah they'd only have to be the same SCALE. Microbe scale, there's both single and multicelled organisms there. I'm not expecting exact replicas, but if there is life at all, microbial life is practically guaranteed. There's a whole bunch of organisms in that petri dish sample.

It does not matter what they're made up of, or how they look, if there's any microbes, they'd be around that scale, and they'd move.

If you'd take a drop of water out of any ocean on earth, except the dead sea(which is too salty to sustain life, it literally sucks the moisture out of cells and kills them), you'd see microbes. They're practically everywhere.

 

[Cerebrawl]

A probe that leaves a phone-home antenna topside, and then drills or melts its way through the ice until it's through, all the while unspooling cable up to the antenna. If it successfully finds a way through, it takes water samples and uses a video camera connected to a microscope to look for microbial life. Perhaps also equip it with a spooled weighted sampling tool that can take deeper water samples.

There's only one tiny small problem. The ice is likely many hundreds of kilometers thick.

Well the total water layer: ice crust + ocean is 100 km thick, however there's frequent volcanic geysers out, and while we don't know the actual thickness, the current best estimate(fits the calculations) is 19km thick, and a range of 19-25km has been proposed based on best current models.

You could have an insulated fiberoptic cable around 30kg/km, so for 25km, it's 750kg of cable, that's a pretty solid amount of the weight budget, but doable.

 

[rofltehcat]

It still needs energy under the ice... so it needs a nuclear reactor. Strip away all that heavy shielding, shoot it up, use the reactor's heat to melt through the ice. Leave relay stations behind every few km that allow for the signal to be sent through the ice via sound (think whale-signals). Then once deep enough, send out smaller subs to do the testing in some distance so whatever you might find isn't instantly ruined by all that radiation.
Overall, it'd probably be huge and if the rocket carrying it messes up, it's raining uranium dust.

 

[Nergui]

*sigh* Yes yes, but have you given any thought to what that means. You know it's like during european colonial expansion. They would define native people as 'uncivilized' or 'savages' . Because of course any civilized being would behave, speak and conduct themselves in the same manner as a white european.

So lets try an experiment... Is the Sun alive? If not, state your proof.

The Sun does not possess one of the defining characteristics of life within our limited knowledge of it, the ability to reproduce.

 

[SilverLion]

Simple, really. Bring along 10 tons of Reese's Pieces, one huge hammer and a long string.
Use the hammer to smash through the ice, thread the Reese's Pieces through the string and dangle the string through the hole in the ice. If E.T has taught us anything it's that aliens love Reese's Pieces and will follow the trail no matter where it goes. When the aliens get through the ice cap and into the spaceship play them a prerecorded message extolling peace and happiness to their species. Then ask them if they can get back to us because our space program is complete shit in regards to their UFO program.

 

[mtarzaim02]

So lets try an experiment... Is the Sun alive? If not, state your proof.

Replication defines life.
The sun cannot replicate itself, therefore it's not alive.
A rock cannot replicate itself.
Certain proteins can replicate themselves, "eating" the available molecules around them to construct another copy of themselves. Therefore they're alive (that's how life appeared on earth, from randomly assembled molecules where one of them was eventually able to construct another one, triggering the life process).

On the NASA stuff, the first problem would be to determine where to dig before digging at all. I think a sismic explorer, mesuring heavy vibrations, would benefit to the mission a lot more. Send it on the surface, send several "impactors" to simulate earthquakes, and look at the 3D rendering of the inner Europa. And if some strangely ordonned structures appear in it, then congrats, you find (intelligent) life.

 

[Pinkamena]

A probe that leaves a phone-home antenna topside, and then drills or melts its way through the ice until it's through, all the while unspooling cable up to the antenna. If it successfully finds a way through, it takes water samples and uses a video camera connected to a microscope to look for microbial life. Perhaps also equip it with a spooled weighted sampling tool that can take deeper water samples.

There's only one tiny small problem. The ice is likely many hundreds of kilometers thick.

Well the total water layer: ice crust + ocean is 100 km thick, however there's frequent volcanic geysers out, and while we don't know the actual thickness, the current best estimate(fits the calculations) is 19km thick, and a range of 19-25km has been proposed based on best current models.

You could have an insulated fiberoptic cable around 30kg/km, so for 25km, it's 750kg of cable, that's a pretty solid amount of the weight budget, but doable.

The deepest hole ever drilled on earth is a little over 12 km deep. I see many problems with drilling even deeper, let alone on a different planet. Mainly, it's the pressure at these depths. It's true that ice weighs less than rock and that the gravity of Europa is less than earths, but I don't think drilling and materials technology is there yet for it to be feasible.
Actually, when I think about, I guess a sort of melter could work. Like, a probe with one hot side slowly melting its way down while the path freezes behind it. It would need a hefty powersource though, and a lot of fiberoptics to a top base station.

 

[Cerebrawl]

The deepest hole ever drilled on earth is a little over 12 km deep. I see many problems with drilling even deeper, let alone on a different planet. Mainly, it's the pressure at these depths. It's true that ice weighs less than rock and that the gravity of Europa is less than earths, but I don't think drilling and materials technology is there yet for it to be feasible.
Actually, when I think about, I guess a sort of melter could work. Like, a probe with one hot side slowly melting its way down while the path freezes behind it. It would need a hefty powersource though, and a lot of fiberoptics to a top base station.

Unmanned planetary probes these days use radioactive decay power generators, the power being generated by the heat from the decaying plutonium oxide. The mars curiosity rover uses it. They last a long time, and since the power is heat based from the start...

[link]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Mission_Radioisotope_Thermoelectric_Generator[/link]

Also Europas surface gravity is 0.134 earth gravity. So the pressure is equally reduced. This follows Boyle's law.

However since europa has a much thinner atmosphere than earth, one trillionth of earth pressure, that also means that the base pressure is a trillionth of that of earth.

Even 25 km deep, I doubt the pressure would even REACH, much less exceed, earth surface pressure.

UPDATE: According to my calculations the gas pressure 25km deep into Europa should be about 3.35x10^-9 bar of pressure. That's 3.35 billionth of earth surface atmospheric pressure.

Even the weight pressure of the ice would only equal 3.35 km deep in earth ice, due to the difference in gravity(yes the calculation really is that easy: multiply by gravity).

 

[crepesack]

Nucleotide phosphate probe that would collect efferent frost/water from geysers.

 

[Pinkamena]

The deepest hole ever drilled on earth is a little over 12 km deep. I see many problems with drilling even deeper, let alone on a different planet. Mainly, it's the pressure at these depths. It's true that ice weighs less than rock and that the gravity of Europa is less than earths, but I don't think drilling and materials technology is there yet for it to be feasible.
Actually, when I think about, I guess a sort of melter could work. Like, a probe with one hot side slowly melting its way down while the path freezes behind it. It would need a hefty powersource though, and a lot of fiberoptics to a top base station.

Also Europas surface gravity is 0.134 earth gravity. So the pressure is equally reduced. This follows Boyle's law.

However since europa has a much thinner atmosphere than earth, one trillionth of earth pressure, that also means that the base pressure is a trillionth of that of earth.

Even 25 km deep, I doubt the pressure would even REACH, much less exceed, earth surface pressure.

UPDATE: According to my calculations the gas pressure 25km deep into Europa should be about 3.35x10^-9 bar of pressure. That's 3.35 billionth of earth surface atmospheric pressure.

Even the weight pressure of the ice would only equal 3.35 km deep in earth ice, due to the difference in gravity(yes the calculation really is that easy: multiply by gravity).

Of course the atmospheric pressure won't be a problem. One bar, as on the surface of the earth, is already nothing compared to the pressures inside earth or Europa.

Melting its way down could be viable if the power source is powerful enough. The surrounding ice is -160 degrees at its warmest, and it will have to heat it up to melting point. A 160 degree difference + large surface area + high heat conductivity and heat capacitance of water/ice means a lot of power is needed. I tried calculating how much exactly, but I'm afraid thermodynamics is not my forte.