and there a some who still ponder that great mystery(see inset)
Posted on 09/13/2006 2:08:21 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
A comprehensive review by leading scientists about our Solar System which speculates on the possibility of life on other planets has been published.
Solar System Update brings together the work of 19 physicists, astronomers, and climatologists from Europe and the USA in 12 chapters on the sun, the main planets and comets.
The book, co-edited by Dr Philippe Blondel, of the University of Bath, highlights the many recent discoveries and in particular the amount of water, one of the essentials for life, found in the Solar System.
Recent studies have revealed ice in craters on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, and that liquid water may once have existed on the surface of Mars and may still be there underground.
In addition, liquid water may exist on moons around Jupiter, in particular Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, underneath a surface of ice.
In his chapter The Habitability of Mars: Past and Present, Thomas McCollom, of the Center for Astrobiology at the University of Colorado, USA, says that though the temperatures on Mars, as low as minus 120 Centigrade, mean that water cannot exist on the surface, there may be a "planet-wide liquid aquifer at some depth in its crust." There is also geological evidence that water has flowed on the surface in the past.
“It seems increasingly apparent that habitable environments very likely exist on Mars today, and may have been considerably more diverse and abundant in the past,” he writes.
In his chapter The Icy Moons of Jupiter, Richard Greenberg, of the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, USA, says: “There is an unusually strong motivation to continue to pursue studies of the icy satellites.”
He says that three large moons of Jupiter “probably have liquid water layers, and one, Europa, almost certainly has an ocean just below the surface. Naturally liquid water raises the possibility of extraterrestrial life.”
However, if the surface ice were very thick, this would cut the water below off from oxygen and sunlight which are important for most forms of life on Earth, and so might have prevented life from developing.
Dr Blondel, who works in the University of Bath’s Department of Physics, took 18 months to edit the book, with his co-editor Dr John Mason.
“This book sets out how much water and ice there is in the solar system," said Dr Blondel. “This obviously has implications for our search for extra-terrestrial life.
“By understanding better how the climates of planets like Mars and Venus have evolved, we can understand more about climate change on Earth.
“For instance, the very hot and cloudy climate of Venus is likely to have developed after a runaway greenhouse effect, and the more we know about this the more we can understand some of the challenges caused by our climate change on Earth."
The full list of the contributors is:
[See list at original article]
The book is published by Springer, Germany and Praxis, UK.
Thanks for the ping, TXnMA! You mentioned it looked interesting. Just looking at the above italics, though, I'm not gonna buy anything from this Dr. Blondel until he shows me the design and execution of any experiments he might have conducted on this question, or any miscellaneous data that might bear on the problem that has accumulated for far, from whatever legitimate sources, that has not yet been fully interpreted.
Plus I tend to put my hand over my wallet anytime someone starts intoning mantras about extraterrestrial life and/or global warming.
I'm just so grim these days, you see, that I'm no fun at all. :^)
And so I'm so glad you wrote, TXnMA. Thank you so very much!
Astronomers once thought Earth was the center of the Solar System. Scientists once thought the Earth was flat and that there was ether in space. They, too, were experts in their fields. They still had faulty models.
Yes. Science continues to learn, and when old models fail, they are rejected in favor of new models that are supported by new information. We know this. Science dumps whatever's demonstrated to be wrong, and sticks with what's demonstrated to be correct. That's why science is increasingly successful.
What's your point? That it's best to avoid learning anything, and to remain mired in creationism?
Thanks thanks.
Love reading your posts.
That's a load of horsecrap. The first life developed under anaerobic conditions and would actually have died in an oxy/nitro atmosphere
Good point. Also, sunlight is not be necessary. There is a lot of tidal heating of the Jovian moons, so there may well be things similar to undersea vents there. Undersea vents on the Earth support life without sunlight.
Thanks for the ping!
Yes indeed, it has great potential. Thanks for the ping!
As they said in contact, if there is no other life out there, it's an awful waste of space.
Hey, watch it buster, *I'm* the only true king of the sandpile... ;')
There are two kinds of people. One kind thinks earth is it forever. The other kind sees 100 billion stars in the galaxy and 100 billion galaxies in the Hubble volume and wonders why we are still sitting here playing king of the sandpile with each other.The Earth is it, even in this Solar System, which will be the only game in town for the foreseeable (give or take some supposed quote of the late Ben Rich) -- regardless of any exobiological entities (microbes). Even though 200 extrasolar planets are known (and that number will yo-yo, even while heading ever higher), very little in the way of their characteristics will be known for a long, long while.
and there a some who still ponder that great mystery(see inset)
Touche
BUMP
Then there was Sagan with his enhanced revelation of wasted space. If there is somebody out there, fine, the space is being utilized; if there is nobody but us, we have a lot of work to do. Right now it appears it is just us. We should proceed on that basis until we do in fact run into the others if they are out there.
No doubt we will have a very long time before we need to begin considering the possibility of filling the universe the way we filled the New World in the 1800s. What little we can do compared to the extent of the Milky Way not to mention the Hubble volume during the average lifetime of a species such as ourselves, be it 10 million years, ought to encourage us to go pedal to the metal and never look back.
You are probably right. The statement is a bit ambiguous to whether it is specific to 'global warming' or is a more general statement. I simply assumed one interpretation and you another. However on rereading the statement, it appears you are more likely to be correct.
By the time the global warming vermin take over everywhere, they'll have us all spend a fortune on refrigeration equipment to lower sea levels and create thick, year-round icecaps in the Arctic, just to save their beachfront homes. ;') There'll be more land at that point...
We could have started fleeing the solar system 20 years ago. There was enough tech to get started. For those who are fixated on that old Sci-Fi nightmare about arriving after 500 years at the next star and finding your camping spot already rented out 450 years earlier because of advances in spaceflight tech advancing so much after you left, remember that we update our operating systems over the comm lines and can do the same in starships.
:')
[old joke]
How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Can't be done! Hardware problem!
We should indeed move out there as soon as possible. As you say, it appears we have a lot of work to do.
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