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News Briefs 15-09-2009

By Jameskeon

How could anyone fall asleep in the midst of all this?

  • Life existed in the oceans 200 million years before oxygen appeared on Earth.
  • The mysterious blood falls. Europa in colour. Europa again in true colour.
  • Atmospheric solar heat amplifier discovered.
  • When nature is freakier than sci-fi.
  • The mysterious collapse of WTC7. BBC report before the collapse.
  • Specialist pleading.
  • Having a bath might be cleaner after all.
  • Twisters captured by storm-chasing photographer.
  • Centre of consciousness discovered?
  • Mountain formation: a choice between speculation and hearsay.
  • Jupiter turned comet into moon for 12 years.
  • Is the starchild skull really a human-alien hybrid?
  • Snake with foot found in China.
  • Machine rebellion begins: killer robot destroyed by US jet.
  • Ancient man used stone sat nav 5000 years ago.

Quote of the Day:

In every work of genius we see our own rejected thoughts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jameske
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9 Comments

  1. Blood Falls – Europa in colour…
    Striking, that the exit fissures should so mimic the event at Blood Falls. NASA adds this disclaimer to the Europa image, but explains it even then as ‘contaminants’…

    “False color has been used here to enhance the visibility of certain features in this composite of three images of the Minos Linea region on Jupiter’s moon Europa taken on 28 June 1996 Universal Time by the solid state imaging camera on NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Triple bands, lineae and mottled terrains appear in brown and reddish hues, indicating the presence of contaminants in the ice.”

    Of course, having no on-site presence on or even around Europa now, ‘contaminants’ could be anything from bacteria to the rust from a decaying Model T Ford. You are left to guess and they are left comfortably uncommitted.

    Just curious… has anyone heard of any methane being detected there?

    …

    1. should be uncommited
      Well, what do you expect? The false color image shows stuff in the (water-) ice that is not ice. Hence the water ice is contaminated by something. NASA doesn’t know what it is, so they don’t say. And they warn you that it’s not actually red.

      But yes it would be better if we had some sort of presence, so we could go check what it is.

      1. Yes, with Europa they used an
        Yes, with Europa they used an excess of colour to make it more obvious, but the true colour image is just less intense – maybe even more in concordance with the blood falls. One wonders why the article talks about life on other planets like Mars when the first place i thought of was Europa after seeing the blood falls, and having read my Arthur C. Clarke.

        1. similarities
          Are the similarities basically the pattern of fissures?

          I don’t know if that would be surprising or not. It is the same material, but at significantly different temperatures.

          Finding life on Europa would be fascinating. We would finally have something to compare our limited sample to.

          We really have to go check.

          I would venture to suggest even more: if there is no life on Europa, we should put it there.

      2. Actually….
        [quote=earthling]Well, what do you expect? The false color image shows stuff in the (water-) ice that is not ice. Hence the water ice is contaminated by something. NASA doesn’t know what it is, so they don’t say. And they warn you that it’s not actually red.
        [/quote]

        I don’t mean to be a smartass but… I knew this much. The point was that regardless of what the contaminants actually are, NASA can play up the colors without getting cornered into anything more than a passing-blush analysis.

        The same thing happens on Mars and they DO have machines there. In fact, since the Viking missions, NASA has gone out of its way NOT to go looking for life. The two rovers? Looking for ‘evidence’ of water. Phoenix was basically doing the same… with a few added features to subscribe to the theme of a life search without actually searching. They tell you right up front that the packages are NOT designed to look for life itself… only things that might lead one to wonder if it could exist.

        Anyway… I just have never seen anything from the Galileo mission (that I can recall) that spoke (one way or another) to the subject of methane from Europa… all the while understanding that said moon is not known to have a very remarkable gas envelope to begin with.

        Cheers 🙂

        …

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