Posted on 09/20/2014 12:35:22 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: For astrobiologists, these may be the four most tantalizing moons in our Solar System. Shown at the same scale, their exploration by interplanetary spacecraft has launched the idea that moons, not just planets, could have environments supporting life. The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered Europa's global subsurface ocean of liquid water and indications of Ganymede's interior seas. At Saturn, the Cassini probe detected erupting fountains of water ice from Enceladus indicating warmer subsurface water on even that small moon, while finding surface lakes of frigid but still liquid hydrocarbons beneath the dense atmosphere of large moon Titan. Now looking beyond the Solar System, new research suggests that sizable exomoons, could actually outnumber exoplanets in stellar habitable zones. That would make moons the most common type of habitable world in the Universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
Titan is the one to get in on! Jet skiing on lakes of methane, YAHOO!!!
;’)
Thank you for the extensive reference…
Even with an athmosphere they’d all be far too cold. There’s probably plenty of water ice in the outer asteroids, sufficient to cover Titan to a few feet at least, leaving some terrain exposed, then work on the atmosphere; or introducing oxygen from the same source to turn that methane into CO2 and water (and some other stuff), then using extremophiles to slowly turn most of the CO2 into oxygen. :’) The place would probably need to have a huge mirror in orbit on the “dark” side or at a libration point (or more than one) to collect and direct more solar radiation, iow, no night, but no really full daylight either.
Oooh, I’m definitely getting tha- 850 mb? Well, okay. Thanks, I’ll post that link in the next X-Planets topic.
I probably could have shortened the link on the page though.
Hey, I like that Berringer Crater one!
Building orbital habitats a la the late Gerard K. O’Neill’s suggestions might make the most sense, but of course, we really don’t need the space down here, contrary to what is often regurgitated by Malthusians.
It’s nice that people have accepted and are working out the details of the idea that various annual meteor showers resulted from cometary debris.
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