Gibbous Europa (APOD 02 Dec 2007)

craterchains · Post by **craterchains** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:36 am

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071202.html

Europa is interesting to me because of the very few craters showing. Why is it interesting to you?

artvegan · Post by **artvegan** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:45 am

Europa reminds me of a very old mans bald head.

craterchains · Post by **craterchains** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:47 am

Hey ! ! I resemble that remark!

artvegan · Post by **artvegan** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:59 am

Hi ,Craterchain,Europa reminds me of a scene in`2001..` where Bowman sees himself as a very old man.

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:16 am

Ignore the chatter at the back of the class.

"Europa is covered in an ice sheet - could be oceans underneath"
But it's also the size of the Moon.
So those features that cast shadows must be - thousands of meters high?
Ice mountains, or just mountains, covered in ice?

John

Nancy D · Post by **Nancy D** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 2:02 pm

That picture reminds me of a ball, the almost tennis-ball size that you might buy at the grocery store, you know, the pink ones. It looks like when the ball gets old, maybe it has been out in the yard for a couple of years, and the surface gets brittle and dry and cracks everywhere. That's what Europa looks like to me in that photo.

kovil · Post by **kovil** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 5:31 pm

A lack of craters, that hadn't hit my consciousness. Perhaps Jupiter protects it? All the cracks, cooled off or dried out, or tectonic stress? The one crater looks like our Moon's Tycho, with the same light color material streaking a long ways out from it. Would that make both moons the same underlying material, or hit by a similar material objects, or is it a trick of the sunlight?

It would be exceedingly interesting to bore down 10,000 ft into the surface in a dozen places. That would tell a tale!

Craterchains, we need to live another 200 years!!

- - - -

So many celestial objects for study, so few nights.

BMAONE23 · Post by **BMAONE23** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:32 am

the streaks remind me of bacteria/algae beneath the ice surface that would be fed by the warmer water welling up from beneath and along the linear cracks,

FieryIce · Post by **FieryIce** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:40 pm

I see an order and pattern in the chaos, which leads to the only possible conclusion, intelligent design. Something has done something to the surface of Europa and all the geologies and astrophyicist can’t with any accuracy explain it. The challenge is not time kovil but proper data, proper researchers without their private agendas and without imposed restrictions, but 200 years would be oh so nice as long as my body didn't age too.
Europa and all the bodies out there interest me because I know accretion disk theory cannot explain retrograde moons going too fast, or circular moons too small to be circular, or planets on their side, or moons too light to be solid also losing their orbits, or our moon not in its position sometimes, or meteors that change their trajectory, or our whole solar system claimed to be elliptic when it is circular with only ever so slightly off circle, or moons with scars identical to our mining operations when viewed from above, need I go on?
Europa in that APOD picture reminds me of all the people acting like sheep following the herd over a cliff not stopping to look ahead and see the alternatives, to see just what is true and not following the crowd because it’s comfortable or imposed on them.

Dr. Skeptic · Post by **Dr. Skeptic** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:25 pm

It looks like a natural regenerating solid over fluid surface to me. Or, an arthroscopic view of an enlarged bladder.

bystander · Post by **bystander** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:25 pm

FieryIce wrote:I see an order and pattern in the chaos, which leads to the only possible conclusion, intelligent design.

Care to explain? I don't think I've ever seen evidence for intelligent design.

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:25 pm

Dr. Skeptic wrote:It looks like a natural regenerating solid over fluid surface to me. Or, an arthroscopic view of an enlarged bladder. :wink:

Ahem!
Where did you qualify, doctor?

Arthron (Greek) a joint >> Arthroscope
Kustis (Greek) a bladder >> Cystis (Latin) >> Cystoscope

Of course if you push hard enough on the 'scope ..............

John

bystander · Post by **bystander** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:37 pm

or perhaps endo- meaning inside - endoscopic

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:08 pm

They're all endoscopes, bystander.

BMAONE23 · Post by **BMAONE23** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:43 pm

Perhaps Laproscopic is what was meant

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:18 pm

LapAroscope << lapara (Greek) flank, abdomen.

How about a choledochoscope?
No Googling!

Easier:
Hysteroscope
Bronchoscope
But otoscope/auroscope ISN'T an endoscope, as it doesn't take you inside; nor does a stethoscope!

Sorry - bit hijacked, but no less silly than FI's "order & Pattern = ID" - back to Europa.
John

kovil · Post by **kovil** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:57 am

Fiery, I agree, the accretion disk theory of solar system formation has an inherent conservation of intrinsic angular momentum component about it, which would not account for the several anomalies of certain planets and moons. On the other hand I don't see any patterns on Europa that look other than naturally occuring designs. I do likewise dismay at how 'lamestream science' feels it must interpret the data for us. Give us the data and spare us your lamestream interpretations, sez we.

200 years might not be enought!! My plan is to download into a flashdrive and live for thousands of years, et tu?

craterchains · Post by **craterchains** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:56 am

An interesting photo here,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02960

An interesting comparison of three of Jupiters moons.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01656

An interesting size comparrison,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01645

More craters,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01404

Just look up some more for yourselves, here,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/target/Europa?start=0

Dr. Skeptic · Post by **Dr. Skeptic** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:36 pm

JohnD wrote:
Dr. Skeptic wrote:It looks like a natural regenerating solid over fluid surface to me. Or, an arthroscopic view of an enlarged bladder.
Ahem!
Where did you qualify, doctor?

Arthron (Greek) a joint >> Arthroscope
Kustis (Greek) a bladder >> Cystis (Latin) >> Cystoscope

Of course if you push hard enough on the 'scope ..............

John

I stand corrected, thank you.

It would be endoscopic, sorry I just had a knee fixed, the term arthroscopic just popped out as unintentionally as the knee did.

JohnD · Post by **JohnD** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:42 pm

No worries, mate!
Have a go at some of the others above.
John

iamlucky13 · Post by **iamlucky13** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:38 pm

How fitting that the European Space Agency is considering a probe to Europa!

kovil wrote:A lack of craters, that hadn't hit my consciousness. Perhaps Jupiter protects it? All the cracks, cooled off or dried out, or tectonic stress? The one crater looks like our Moon's Tycho, with the same light color material streaking a long ways out from it. Would that make both moons the same underlying material, or hit by a similar material objects, or is it a trick of the sunlight?

My guess is the cracks are caused by tidal stress from either Jupiter or passes by other moons. I think Europa is tidally locked, but just the eccentricity of its orbit cause enough change in the gravitational force to cause the cracks over millions of years.

I'm not sure I see the crater you're talking about, but the streaking could actually be cracking. If it's material deposits, it doesn't say much about the interior composition compared to the moon, just about the relative brightness of the interior material compared to the exterior material, and even that might be explained by different relfections off of dust like material than off a solid surface. We see this on Mars, where many of the rocks are grey, but the dust is red.

The lack of old features can probably be explained by the fact that even ice flows, although not quite as easily as water:

craterchains · Post by **craterchains** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:36 am

Quite obviously most are not looking at many pictures, just the one.

NoelC · Post by **NoelC** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:10 pm

What is the overall density? It should be possible to determine the overall depth of ice/water vs. rock. No doubt someone's done this on Europa; it's been done on extrasolar planets.

The intelligent design I see is not at the macro level, but at the quantum level. Who's to say we are not all part of a hyper-complex computer simulation (or something similar but which we cannot possibly conceive in our frames of reference)? That would explain some parts of quantum physics nicely, not to mention proposing the possibility that the "why" for some things is just plain arbitrary - a college project for a superbeing undergrad perhaps. Perhaps he didn't get it all quite right, which is why there are such quantum phenomenon as "tunneling".

Stuff at the macro level has patterns because of the myriad decisions taken at the quantum level, based on "The Rules" that have been programmed. Look at the patterns on a butterfly wing. Sure would like to meet the designer someday!

Want to bake your noodle even more? Do the laws of physics work across time bidirectionally? Just because we perceive the dimension of time as passing only "forward", is it really limited to doing that in the grand sense? Perhaps it can be traversed in both directions by someone "outside" the simulation as easily as turning a shuttle on a remote.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

Hope I live long enough to see results from a Europa probe. My sincere hope is that when we drop an aquabot down there we spot something looking back at us.

-Noel

Starship Asterisk*

Gibbous Europa (APOD 02 Dec 2007)

Gibbous Europa (APOD 02 Dec 2007)

Life on Europa,like the northwest territories without summer

Intelligent Design? More like Brilliant.