{"id":2752,"date":"2015-11-19T17:02:32","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T23:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2015-11-19T17:02:32","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T23:02:32","slug":"europas-ocean-punching-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/11\/19\/europas-ocean-punching-through\/","title":{"rendered":"Europa&#8217;s Ocean Punching Through"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The buried ocean of Europa may not require drilling if <em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><\/em>&#8216;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg22830464-300-salt-flats-on-europa-mean-moons-ocean-may-come-to-surface\/\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> (7 November 2015, paywall) is accurate:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Observations from the Galileo spacecraft, which visited the Jupiter system in the 1990s, found that the moon hosts an ocean covered in water ice. Sulphur and oxygen from volcanoes on the nearby moon Io also fall onto Europa\u2019s surface, where they combine to make magnesium sulphate. Now a new analysis has found an unidentified material that only shows up in fractured terrain. This could mean the buried ocean is breaching the surface.<\/p>\n<p>The spectrum, or chemical signature, of the material has so far defied identification. \u201cIt looks like the spectrum of water ice except that it\u2019s distorted,\u201d says Patrick Fischer at the California Institute of Technology. The team hasn\u2019t been able to reproduce it using a library of known chemicals \u2013 although they can rule out sulphates, which researchers expected to see.<\/p>\n<p>One possibility is an unknown blend of potassium or sodium chloride. This would mean these regions are salt flats left behind when ocean water burbled up and then evaporated (Astronomical Journal, in press). \u201cWe can guess that the spectrum we\u2019re seeing is probably evaporate deposits of salt left over from the ocean,\u201d Fischer says.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov\/browse\/PIA19048.jpg?w=800\" alt=\"The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s.\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just land and scoop.\u00a0 And take off.\u00a0 And fly back.<\/p>\n<p>OK, not that easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The buried ocean of Europa may not require drilling if NewScientist&#8216;s report (7 November 2015, paywall) is accurate: Observations from the Galileo spacecraft, which visited the Jupiter system in the 1990s, found that the moon hosts an ocean covered in water ice. Sulphur and oxygen from volcanoes on the nearby \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/11\/19\/europas-ocean-punching-through\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2754,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions\/2754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}