Re: Anti Grav......

On 23 Apr 1997, Alun Thomas wrote:

> > First the Mars rock, then cloning, then the suggestion that there
might be
> > life on Europa. Now anti-grav frogs. Maybe Jon should redo his
timeline in
> > the GZG rulebooks. It may be a little too conservative... :-)
> 
> Life on Europa ? Is this the idea that there *could* be a liquid ocean
under 
> the ice,
> which *might* be able to support life, is is there any new evidance ?

Being probably the only Oceanographer on this list, I thought I'd better
jump in.  Over here this is a pretty exciting subject, especially
considering we have a couple of the researchers on this topic here (John
Delaney and John Baross, if there names have come up in your local
broadcasts).

Basically, there is strong evidence of two important consistuants in
current theories of how to make life (besides the theistic
theory--please
don't flame me ;).  First is liquid water under the surface ice.  Many
of
the structures on the ice surface suggest that the ice has moved over
time.  They look alot like how ice buckles together under pressure, or
the
way water fills in when ice flows apart in the ice fields of the Arctic
and Antarctic.

Now, if there is liquid water below the surface, this implies that
Europa
is internally heated.  The 2nd environmental necessity for life to
develop
is heat (again, in theory).  It also looks like there has been volcanic
activity on Europa at some point, which also suggests internal heating.
This is most likely caused by the strong tidal influences it
experiences.

We know that life can exist without light (from hydrothermal vents on
the
ocean floor), so that further suggests the potential for life to exist
there.	All you need is some help from amino acids being injected into
the
water (via comets) to spike the punch and there is some real potential.
However, I must interject that this is all very hypothetical, but it
seems
alot of science fiction has become fact as of late.

A temporally displaced		Bill Nitsche (bnitsche@u.washington.edu)
	hobbit			Oceanography, University of Washington