What's Under The Ice On Europa?

This moon of Jupiter has an ENORMOUS ocean. Does anything live in it?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey or hey, when you think about finding life on
other planets, what do you imagine I want to hear
what an artistic cartoonist thinks about when he thinks about
life on other planets. Well, you know, I think of
little green men or blue, tall attractive people like an avatar,
or you know, crazy blobs or weird plants. So you're
mostly thinking about life like on these planets, like on

(00:29):
the surface. Yeah, like living things on the surface of
other planets. What if there could be like strange underground life,
not life on other planets, but life in other planets
you mean like underneath the surface. Yeah, like underground life
on other planets. Oh. Man, it sounds like a like
a pretty cool, hid grungy kind of extraterrestrial life, you know,

(00:50):
be part of the underground scene. Yeah, exactly interesting. So
like we could look at a planet and think, oh,
it's barren, there's nothing there, but really there could be
amazing cities on I need the surface. Yeah, we'll just
think about our oceans. Right, If you look at the
ocean from space, you don't see that much action, right,
But of course there's a huge amount of stuff going
on under the surface. Um, it could be more than

(01:11):
what you see. Hi, I'm Jorge and I'm Daniel, and
welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe,

(01:34):
a production of I Heart Radio in which a cartoonist
and a physicist try to break it all down for
you and explain to you all that weird stuff you
always wanted to understand but didn't feel comfortable asking your
friends about. Yeah, it was the weird things on the surface,
and then maybe possibly cooler stuff underneath the surface of things,
the cooler, weirder, probably slimier stuff too, so do they.

(01:57):
On the podcast, we'll be talking about Europa, the moon
of Jupiter. What is it? Where is it? Could there
be life in it or on it, or under it
or inside of it? Behind it? Could there be an
alien slime ship just hiding behind Europa al we dodging

(02:18):
out of you as we look at it at all times? Yeah,
it might be possibly one of the only other places
in our solar system where there could be life. There
could be really goopy, slimy life out there. Why do
you think that aliens are often associated with slime in movies? Um? Well,
they can't be um dry. I guess that it wouldn't

(02:41):
be gross or alien? Or can't you have like an
armadillo life? You know, armadillos are not slimy, all right,
What can't aliens be more like armadillos? They always seem
to be like, you know, salamanders, or goopy and gross,
like there's some sort of like aliens have to be disgusting,
they have to feel alien, I guess, so well, let's

(03:02):
talk about it. What else. Europa is one of the
moons of Jupiter. So Jupiter, another planet in our Solar system,
has many moons, and one of them is called Europa.
That's right, And you know, it's very interesting to us,
of course, ask the question is there life out there
in the universe? And so we naturally think about looking
for life in places where we would live, you know,

(03:23):
on the surface of a nice, warm, rocky planet. But
we should think more broadly. We should think about whether
there's life and other kinds of places, places where you
and I wouldn't want to live, places a little too slimy,
but places that still there could be something wriggling around
in right, then might have the conditions or the ingredients
for life, but maybe not necessarily looked like the planet Earth. Yeah, exactly,

(03:44):
and certainly not a place you'd want to vacation too.
And so in this episode we want to dive deep
into the moon of Jupiter Europa and see about and
talk about whether it's possible for there to be life
underground in that moon. You mean you don't want to
have a europay in vacation if European, I'm a going,

(04:06):
oh no, But I think it'd be really fascinating. Say
we do discover life in Europe. But you know, that
would be amazing because it would tell us a lot
about the likelihood of life forming in general. Right when
you have these conditions, how often does life start? And
we just haven't found the conditions for life in many
other places, and so it's fascinating to get to just,
you know, peek in on an alien body of water

(04:29):
and see if they're microbes or fish or crazy angry
octopy or something. Yeah. Well, Europe is interesting because it's
kind of a mystery, right, because it's a moon of Jupiter,
but it's covered in ice, and scientists think that maybe
underneath all that ice is a big giant ocean. Yeah,
Europe is crazy. We'll get into that. But it's a

(04:51):
really weird object it's got lots of mysteries in it.
But before we do, we thought, what do people think
about whether there's life on this moon? People know about
these alien oceans and people believe there might be life
under there. Yeah, So, as usually, Daniel went out into
the UC Irvine campus and ask people on the street
what do they think is under the ice? In Europa? Yeah,

(05:13):
here's what people had to say a variety of responses,
as you'll hear. So I think for a moment, what's
your bit what do you think would be found in
an alien ocean under kilometers of ice? And then listen
to these responses gas, Oh yeah, I mean like unknown
things that we're not a mean to or like so
we haven't discovered yet. Maybe do you think there might

(05:35):
be life? Maybe it could be, Yeah, because I believe
like like parallel universes and like there has to be
life and in other universes. So maybe, like I know,
some kind of like fishes or something, I don't know,
maybe some weird creatures or something like that, there might
be life on the moon. Rangine, Yeah, definitely, I believe

(05:57):
there's life all around us. Yeah, awesome, I don't I
don't expect they don't find life. No, why not? It
seems very improbable. Like, you know, I feel like life
can you know, happen because you know, obviously Earth, but
I feel like the odds of something like that to
happen would just be very, very small. It's possible that
there could be some like intelligent life since there is water,

(06:20):
but it is pretty far away from the sun, might
be too cold for anything to sustain off. So you
think water on another planets a chance of his life there? Yeah, definitely,
probably some debris, some space debris. Seriously, I mean, do
you think there might be life there? As far as life?
I mean, grass is an organism? Is this life? So
in essentially for all into the purpose of perspectively, they

(06:43):
might find some life. Cool, Okay, pretty interesting. I find
it interesting that most people kind of knew what you
were talking about, Like you said, what's under the neath
the ice in Europa? And people didn't flish. They're not, like,
what what's underneath Europe? What do you mean like Iceland,
Finland or sweet Yeah that's true. Yeah, no, you're right,

(07:03):
And um, some people were shocked to discover that there
could be oceans of water and other planets, right, Um,
But most people when you when I told them that
there was a water ocean, or when they believe that
for the moment, a lot of people were confident that
we could find life there. I think people have this
sense that water means life, and that life is not
a rare thing, and and that when you have the conditions,

(07:25):
you should expect it to pop up to flour wherever it.
Wherever it can we associated with life? Like how can
you have water without any life or bacteria or little
bugs in it? It would be weird to think of
that much water, totally pure and clean exactly, And you
know that much water and that much time, Right, a
blob of water with organic chemicals, and it's sitting around

(07:48):
for billions of years. It feels like the right stuff's
gotta bounce into each other just the right way eventually. Right,
there's just so much time and so many combinations. Yeah,
so so much water for citing there for such a
long time. Is it kind of the most probable place
where life might be elsewhere in our solar system besides Earth?
That's a great question. You know, you have to make

(08:09):
a bet. Remember we once talked about an underground body
of water on Mars as well, they've found a body
of water kilometers underground on Mars. I mean, haven't sampled it.
They just detected it's they're using the ground penetrating radar,
and so that might also have microbes. We don't know.
But something really fascinating about Europa is that it's further

(08:31):
from Earth. So for example, if you discover life on Mars,
you know, you might make the argument that life started
on Earth and got to Mars as rocks got blown
off the surface, and you guys should listen to that
whole podcast episode we did about it. But Europa is
far away. So if life started on Europa, it would
probably be unique. It would be a separate it would
be distinct, right, It would mean life starting on its

(08:52):
own again, not just spreading from Earth or to Earth.
It couldn't have come from us. It must have origin
at it totally separately from life here. Yeah, you know,
unless our ancient ancestors somehow we're space faring and landed
on Jupiter and you know, seated it with life and
then lost that technology and all traces of it were

(09:13):
destroyed except for that weird hypolicis somebody other probably believes yes, exactly,
would have to start Weird Possibility Saw and a bad
science fiction movie. You mean the science fiction novel I'm
currently writing. What are you talking about? That? This idea
that one caveman space spaceman. Come on, I see caveman aliens.

(09:34):
That's right, I'm crazy spaceman iceman. Wasn't that the Saturnday
Live episode? Anyway? Um, yeah, let's dig into it. Let's
talk about why Europa attracted people's attention in the first place. Yeah,
let's let's dig to the core of the issue. Yeah,
but we have to start on the surface, because the
weirdest thing about Europa is that it's pretty smooth, like

(09:56):
it's cool. It is very cold in fact, on the surface.
It's not a kind of place you want to go.
The temperature on the surfaces like mineus two hundred and
sixty degrees fahrenheit on a sunny day. But actually, what
I meant is that there aren't a lot of craters
on the surface because you know, the Solar System is
a messy place. There's asteroids and rocks bouncing around everywhere,

(10:18):
and basically everything in the Solar System is constantly being
bombarded by small rocks, which is while you look in
the Moon. You see all these craters, right, So it
doesn't have any pimples on its on its face, yeah, exactly.
And so the weird thing about Europa is that it
has hardly any craters on it, right, It's so smooth.
It doesn't have an atmosphere like Earth. Earth doesn't have
a lot of craters because our atmosphere acts like a pillow,

(10:41):
you know, it's like a water bed or something. It
slows down the rocks and disperses their energy before they
hit the surface. Europa it has a very slight atmosphere,
but not enough to act as a break for any
of these rocks. So you would expect, since it's billions
of years old, that it would be pummeled with rocks
and have lots of holes on its surface, but it doesn't.
It's very smooth. Does that mean it means that the

(11:01):
surface is pretty young, right, that it hasn't been around
very long um or it's being constantly refreshed right or erased.
You know, it's like a chalkboard that somebody comes in
and cleans every morning, and then you fill it up
with equations and then they clean it again, right, or
maybe somebody grooms it. Somebody somebody out there with a
huge rake. Yeah, exactly. Um, the fascinating thing is they

(11:24):
tried to estimate the age of the surface of Europa,
and you know, it's basically consistent with zero. You know,
the measurement they get is like fifty million years plus
or minus fifty million years, just based on the craters,
just based on the size and the number of the craters. Yeah,
something is going on on the surface of Europa that's
refreshing the surface. It's like erasing it. It's like it's

(11:45):
for ever young, like it uses bullox, lunar bulltox. Well,
let's give people some context. So Europa is one of
the moons of Jupiter, one of the planets in our
solar system. And I was reading it's about almost the
size of our moon m hm. And we have a

(12:06):
pretty big moon, right, So being close to the size
of around moon means you're being pretty big m So
it is a pretty sizeable ball of rock or ice
out there, and it orbits Jupiter every three and a
half days m m m exactly, which probably is it.
It's sort of see, sunlight has kind of a day
night period, probably around three and a half days. Then,

(12:29):
but remember it's much further from the Sun than our planet,
and so it gets like one twentieth of the amount
of sunlight. The Sun in the sky of Europa is
a tiny, tiny dot, whereas Jupiter is mammoth right, it
appears hugely in the sky. Is that why it's so
icy and cold because it's so far away. Yeah, that's

(12:49):
one of the reasons why it's so icing cold. Also,
it doesn't have much of an atmosphere, which could you know,
collect and keep that warmth on the surface. Um, yeah, exactly.
And also Jupiter is blasting it with radiation, so the
surface of Europa is not a very friendly place. Wait,
Jupiter is shooting at it, what do you mean, Yeah,
well Jupiter, you know, like the Sun, Jupiter produces a

(13:09):
lot of radiation. You know, there's crazy stuff happening in
the core of Jupiter because of all the gravitational pressure
produces huge amounts of radiation. And you know, just in
general out in space, this radiation right from the Sun
but also from Jupiter, and there's nothing, there's no atmosphere
to protect you. So if you were on the surface
of Europa, you would get a fatal dose of radiation

(13:29):
very quickly. Oh, so it doesn't have an atmosphere. It
has a very very thin atmosphere, essentially nothing useful to
protect you from radiation. So it's not a very hospitable place.
It's cold, it's frozen, there's no nothing, Their breathe getting
cancer every five minutes. You know, there's really nothing in
the brochure that would attract you, except of course for
the scientific mysteries, right, the things that make you think, what,

(13:51):
how could that be? What's going on? Yeah? Yeah, So
the weird thing or the incredible things about Europa are
what's going on inside of it? Right? Yeah? So the
outside is this water crust, right, it's frozen water crust.
It's ice and you know the ice spikes on the
surface are like fifteen meters high. And um. There was

(14:12):
a bunch of spacecraft that flew by Europa and took
a bunch of pictures and measurements because they were trying
to understand like what is going on with this surface?
How is this surface getting reformed? Why is it so
smooth and looking exactly? And so what they did was
they try to probe the inside of it. They were like,
well what is this made out of? Right? Is there

(14:33):
like weird tectonic activity because you know on Earth, Earth
is very active, right, the plates are always moving and shifting,
and so you're getting new surfaces being formed as as
you know, volcanoes erupt and stuff. So they're wondering maybe
it was tectonic activity. So they FLU did all these
fly bys to try to measure what's going on inside,
and this is really cool. They just measure the gravitational

(14:54):
pull on the satellite from various angles in various directions,
and they can get a map basically of the density
of what's going on inside without landing or or going inside.
They can get a map of the density of the
stuff inside the Moon from a distance. You can tell
these things, yeah, just from gravitational measurement. And NASA does
this also on Earth, like NASA can sea. You know

(15:16):
when your house is sinking by an inch or by
a meter or by two ms due to like ground
water being sucked up, because it's making these very detailed
gravitational measurements the effect of the of gravity on satellites.
So what they found when they did this is that
there's this very thick crust water, crust, water, ice, crust
on the outside and underneath it is something with the

(15:37):
density of water. And they were like, what, how could
there be something with a density of water because you
have this frozen stuff, right, which is less dense. And
then under that they saw this huge band of something
that has the density of of of liquid water. So
it could be a giant ocean, a giant underground ocean.

(15:58):
Yeah exactly. And so of the best guess is that
there's a huge underground ocean of water. And you know,
they think it's water because it has the right density
and because the outside of Europa is frozen water. Right,
it's not like something exotic like liquid methane or something um.
But it's not small. It's not like, you know, two
or three cups of water. If you took all the

(16:21):
liquid in the oceans of Europa, it would be two
or three times the amount of water on the surface
of the Earth in a much smaller ball of rock. Right, yeah, exactly, exactly.
It's much more smaller than the moon, right, And so
it's a thick layer of water. Okay, well, let's dig
into that mystery. But first let's take a quick break. Alright,

(16:54):
So Europa is a moon of a Jupiter, and it's
interesting because it's it's made out of ice, but under
neat that ice there's a huge ocean of water. We think, yeah, exactly,
And it gets weirder as you go in. I think, right,
so you've got this ice crust on the outside, and
then you've got this liquid center, right, it's like a
it's like a candy or something. And then on the

(17:16):
inside of that you have this rocky ball with some
metal in it. Also, you have these three basic components
and everything is spinning, but it's not really connected. Right,
the inside bit, the rocky bit on the inside, is
not connected to the shell, the water, the ice shell
on the very outside, because there's this liquid, right, so
they can slip, And what they think is that the

(17:39):
outside is rotating at a different speed from the inside, right,
So like the outside is like eventually laps the inside.
So it's like a shell floating on top of or
around a metal core. I know, if if you included
this in my bad Um Spaceman Iceman Caveman science fiction
novel that I'm supposed to be adding, you would think

(18:01):
this is crazy. This could never happen in real life.
I mean, let's get realistic. I love that you look
out there in the universe and you find such weird stuff, right,
stuff you could never imagine or dream up. Well, so
it'd be kind of like going to Antarctica and you
know it's a huge sheet of ice, but underneath that
is sort of there there there's water, right, like you
could swim underneath these sheets of ice. Yeah, exactly, it's

(18:24):
warmer underneath the sheets of ice, right. And the thing
that's providing that warmth is that is Jupiter. And it's
not the radiation, but Jupiter's gravitational field is constantly squeezing Europa, right,
something we call tidal forces, which sounds complicated, it's actually
pretty simple to understand. You know that gravity, the strength
of gravity, falls as the distance, right, So the further

(18:45):
way you get from Jupiter, the weaker gravity is. Well,
imagine you're a big body, you're like a moon like Europa.
Then Jupiter is pulling harder on the bit of you
that's closer to Jupiter, and it's not pulling as hard
on the bit that's further away. But that means it's
a big sickly trying to pull the moon apart. Right,
It's tugging harder on one part than on the other.
So it's trying to pull a moon apart. This is

(19:07):
what we call a tidal force that generates heat and warmth. Yeah,
it's like you know, it's it's like Jupiter's taking his
hand and squeezing it constantly, right, and that's pumping energy
into it. It's like it's like an engine, right, Jupiter's
gravitational field take. It's like taking an orange and like
massaging it, kind of like hot stone massage for a

(19:28):
whole moon. Right. And there's a huge ocean and it's
the ice cross it's huge. It's like a hundred kilometers thick. Yeah.
They don't know exactly how thick it is. That's difficult.
They're going to figure that out when they send the
next satellite there, but they estimate around a hundred kilometers thick. Yeah,
and the ice crust is being cracked constantly. Right. If

(19:49):
you're gonna massage something which is like a sphere of ice,
then you're gonna end up cracking its shell. And so
we see all these stripes on these lines on the
surface of Europa, not craters, right, it's smooth, it's pretty
smooth from the crater point of view, but there are
these cracks which they think come from these tidal forces
squeezing the ice on ice. Okay, so there are wrinkles
on this bultos perfect just like you see an Orange county.

(20:14):
No plastic surgery ever really looks good. Well, I read
also read this cool thing that Europa has water volcanoes.
I know, it just gets crazier and crazier. Right, So
what happens when you have high pressure water trapped under
ice and then you squeeze that ice, when you're gonna
get cracks and then the water is gonna spew out.
And so we have these pictures from Hubble. We pointed

(20:37):
Hubble at at Europa and they have these pictures of
what looks like plumes of water right there, basically water volcanoes.
The ice cracks and the water shoots up. And these
are not small, you know, they go up like two
hundred kilometers into space. And that's like, you know, multiple
times the height of Mount Everest. Imagine a volcano on
Earth shooting lava, you know, six times the height of

(21:00):
Mount Everest. That would be an event. Yeah, it's like
a ginormous geyser, but yes, exactly, and you know it
makes Earth feel like a calm place you know, we
have like volcanoes and earthquakes and stuff, But the more
you look out into the Solar System, the more you discover, like, wow,
other planets and moons are much more extreme than the
stuff on Earth. Earth is like a pretty calm and

(21:22):
cozy place to live. Yeah, and just one qualifier on
the water plumes. You know that there is a picture
from Hubble that shows something that looks like a plume um.
Scientists are still a little skeptical, right, They're not a
sure that there really are water plumes um. But it's
also connected to this idea of the surface, right, it
could be that the reason the surface is getting reformed,

(21:45):
the reason it looks smooth, is that like all these
cracks are appearing, and maybe the ice is turning over
or you know, getting rotated somehow, or you know, they
don't fully understand it. It's hard to come up with
a model that explains how the surface gets reformed, but
it might have something to do with, you know, all
this activity under the ice breaking it, sucking some of
it down and sending up new pieces to get hit

(22:06):
by asteroids, kind of like the ice sheets and Antarctic
I keep moving, shifting, and yeah, reforming exactly, So if
you were to build a house there, it might not
be there in fifty million years. That's right. One more
reason not to build a house on Europa. Okay, so
that's Europe. It's pretty cool. So if you flew there

(22:28):
and landed, it would you would it would sort of
feel like you're on the Moon kind of. And then
if you drilled a hole a hundred kilometers deep, you
would find a huge ocean and you could you could
potentially swim in it, right, because it would be sort
of around the same density as the water that we
have here. Yeah, exactly. And you know, the Moon is
mostly rock, whereas this this planet, when you land down,

(22:49):
it would be mostly water ice. And they have pictures
from Europe and it looks like not a very friendly
place to land. There's like spikes of these water ice
reach of like fifteen meters. You know, it's like these
needle thin i am super sharp icicles on the surface.
So it's not a friendly place. It's not like, hey,
come look land on me. Right in comparison to the

(23:11):
Moon is a much friend to the place. But you're right,
there is this ocean of water under the ice. It
wouldn't be a smooth landing if you try to get there.
That's right. It's sort of like that friend you have,
you know, who's like sort of grumpy on the outside,
but then when they get home, they're nice and friendly.
You know. Europe is like that. It's really unfriendly and
unwelcoming on the outside, but it has this chewy candy

(23:32):
center right at this ocean of water at the right
temperature for life, and it has smooth skin. That's the
other as your friend, exactly. So we don't know too
much about what's in that water. That's really the biggest question,
like the organic molecules in there. Is it too salty
for life? You know, it could be salt water. Yeah,
it could be salty, right, or who who knows what

(23:54):
else it could be. You could have other things, you know,
it could have high concentrations of other things. Right, It
could like water, but it could be really dangerous for
us to drink. Yeah, exactly. There could certainly be toxic
for us, but you know, life on Earth has evolved
in lots of places that are toxic for us. It's
really pretty incredible what you get when you have a
lot of time and a lot of volume. So life

(24:15):
on Earth, for example, can survive even in places with
no sun. Right, Folks that there might be asking, how,
wait a second, how can you have life under the
ocean if there is a crust on top and it's
totally dark. Right, This is not a warm, balmy ocean
in the Caribbean. It's totally black, right, it's jet black.
But that happens here on Earth. That happens here on
Earth also exactly, you have places under the water where

(24:38):
there's heat escaping from the Earth's crust, from the Earth's
um core and heats up the water and bubbles it
up and stuff. And the same thing we think is
happening on the on Europa. Remember, the Jupiter's massaging it
and creating all this activity inside of it, and some
of that's creating heat which is warming up the water,
and that's enough energy for life. Yeah, So that's the

(24:59):
big question, and that's what's so interesting about Europa is
that there could be life in it. In these giant oceans,
there certainly could be. So what's the probability do you
think that there is life in there? That's a great question,
and you know, unfortunately we don't really have a great
scientific answer to that. You know, um, because we've never

(25:20):
gotten data from other places, right, we haven't ever sampled
alien water. You know, if we had done it a
hundred times and we've only seen life once, then we know,
oh a, life is pretty rare. But the only time
we've ever looked at water is here on Earth, and
so we have no information, right, And that's exactly why
we want to do this. We want to get sample
number two to understand and you know, sample number two

(25:42):
has life in it. Also, if two totally separate examples
both have life, Wow, then the possibilities for life are huge.
Because you look out into the sky and there's lots
of stars with lots of planets, a lot of them
have liquid water. And if the probability for there to
be life and any sample of liquid water is larger
than any tiny amount, that means it's a huge amount

(26:04):
of life out there, so be mind blowing. But unfortunately
we don't really have an answer. Well, it's exciting to
think about because Europa does have kind of all the
ingredients for life, right that we know about water, energy, chemistry,
compounds from from rocks and things like that, right exactly,
And that ocean is conveniently shielded from Jupiter's harmful radiation

(26:27):
by the hundred kilometers or so of ice, But like
we have our atmosphere to protects they those Europeans would
have the ice sheet to protect them. Yeah. And you
know if we if imagine there's intelligent life on Europa, right,
what would they think of their planet? Like do they
think of the ice the way we think of the atmosphere? Right,
Like we think of the edge of the Earth as

(26:48):
the surface right where the rock ends, but really the
atmosphere is part of the Earth. Maybe they would think
of the edge of Europa is like the top of
the water, and the rest of it is what they
would call atmosphere, you know, right, or their worldview would
be kind of like our worldview two thousand years ago,
where we think that made there's a ceiling to the sky. Yeah,
like they literally do have a ceiling. Right. Wow. Imagine

(27:14):
being intelligent life in Euroba and creating like a whole
cosmology and mythology about how the universe works, and then
drilling out and discovering that there's an enormous universe out there.
Why that would be mind blowing. That would be amazing.
So so it is possible that there is life in Europa.
It's totally possible. And you know, I think if you
ask scientists, they're not signed. Their non scientific opinion would

(27:36):
be it's a good chance. And that's why we're also excited.
That's why we're spending billions of dollars to send missions
out there to figure it out. All right, that's pretty cool.
All right, let's let's jump into what these plans are
to get there and to study it. But first let's
take another quick break. I'm so excited about life on Europa.

(28:07):
Why he love meeting Europeans. Europeans they're so sophisticated and
croissants and Europa are fantastic. We know. I just think
it's incredible. It's so weird and interesting and um, honestly,
I believe this life there. You just want to see
Aquaman in real life. I want to see life on

(28:29):
another place other than Earth, and I'm just desperate to
discover it. And I can't wait. I mean, it's out
there waiting for us and we just don't know the answer,
and we will know soon. I'm just so impatient. But
what do you think that instinct comes from? Like, what
what is it that makes you want to confirm that
there's life elsewhere, or to meet other life out there,
like don't you aren't you? Aren't you surrounded by other

(28:51):
people already and I hate most of them, You're right,
So why would I want to meet anybody else? No,
even though I'm an introvert, I do want to life
on other planets. But mostly I think the answer pretty
basic questions, you know, like what is the context of
our existence? Are we alone in the universe or not?
It changes everything. If we're not alone, you know, it

(29:12):
means something about how special we are, how unusual we are.
It just it it changes the whole context of the
human experience, you know, religion out the window, right, If
there's life in other places? Um, well, I mean if
if we find life elsewhere, obviously we go from one
data point of life to two data points, which is,
you know, increase. But would that really tell you that

(29:35):
much about the rest of the university? Would still have
that question? I mean, you would have the probability or
double the probability, but it's you still wouldn't know what
the actual probability is. No, but you have a much
much better estimate, and you know it must be a
lot larger than zero. Right, Because you could say that
life on Earth is not an independent test because we

(29:55):
are here to ask the question. We wouldn't be asking
the question if there wasn't life on Earth. So it
could be that we're the only life in the universe
and we're asking the question because we're alive. So what
we need is an independent data point. So if we
go and get a sample from another place that hasn't
been infected by Earth, it'll tell us independently how how

(30:15):
likely life is to exist. And yeah, it's only one
data point. But if in one data point you get
a positive response, that means the answer must be a
lot more than zero, right, or you were crazy, crazy,
crazy lucky. But much more likely would be that the
answer is you know, half the time you get life. Yeah,

(30:38):
well let's get let's get into it. Our what are
humans as plans to go to Europa and check out
what's underneath all that ice, to poke poke through the ice. Well,
I'm building something in my backyard right now because I'm
desperate to know and i can't wait. See you later.
That's right, Daniel's final European vacation. Um No, we have

(31:00):
several plans. Um the most imminent. One is called the Clipper,
and this is something being developed by JPL and others.
And I spoke to an expert there who gave me
so much useful information. It was really fantastic. She's so excited. Um,
And this is something that we planned that they plan
to launch in like twenty three, So it's you know,

(31:21):
a few years away before even gets out into space,
and then it would take a few years to get there.
By then you might be already be there, Daniel, yea,
by then our civilization might just be smoking rubble anyway,
and then be nobody just the dancers. Back to right exactly.
But the the interesting thing about this is that it's
not going to land. A landing on Europa is a

(31:43):
whole other problem, which we'll talk about later. This one's
just going to do a bunch of fly bys. Also,
you can't really orbit Europa. You can't. You cannot. Why
not because the radiation is crazy. So if you go
into orbit around Europa, all our electronics that will be fried,
and the solar cells and all that stuff would be
fried in weeks. It's like a one way trip. Yeah,
So instead of orbiting Europa, it's going to do a

(32:04):
bunch of fly by's right, It's like, you know, it's
going to run through It's like running through the sprinklers
instead of getting downsed. It's gonna do you, like, you know,
several dozen fly bys to get these measurements. It's going
to maybe like orbit Jupiter, or it's going to orbit
the the whole source system, but each time it's going
to go near Europa to take some pictures. Yeah, exactly.

(32:25):
I think it's gonna orbit Jupiter and it's going to
try to do as many fly bys by Europe as possible.
And you know, my hope is that there's a huge
water volcano eruption right when it's flying by, and then
it could fly through that spray and get some water. Yeah.
And I asked Cynthia from JPL, I said, what do
you think is going to happen? And she said, well,

(32:45):
I don't think we're gonna fly through it and get
hit by a fish, which is disappointing because that was
actually my mental image is like, of course it's going
to be like some weird octopus probably obviously not a fish.
It's gonna be guys, the the satellites gone offline. What happened, right,
some enormous two kilometer sized shark like jumps up and

(33:07):
bites it. No, but it would be amazing to sample it.
And this instrument, sorry, this this thing, the Europa Clipper
has lots of useful instruments on board. One thing is
an ice penetrating radar that can use to like measure
the ice and figure out how deep it is and
sort of image the inside of the planet. Right, and
there's another mission out there to being prepared to actually

(33:28):
um get even closer. Yeah that's right, but we're but
that's years away. And so I'm really hoping that the
Europa Clipper gives us some useful information because also on
board from the Clipper is something called a mass spectrometer,
and this is a really fancy piece of chemical equipment
that tells you basically what's in some stuff, you know,

(33:48):
how heavy are all the molecules in something. So if
you could like fly through a water plume, or even
if you don't get that lucky, you know, there's gonna
be like little bits of Europa just sort of floating
out in the space nearby it. Because as constant impacts
from small meteors spewing stuff into space, you could still
sample that water ice and try to figure out what's
in it, and so that might be really interesting hints

(34:10):
of life. Right, So we're still many many years away
from actually sending something that will land there and actually
drill through the ice, right, Like, that's not coming anytime
soon because it's a dangers time soon. Yeah, there's botox
everywhere and radiation. But I was I was wondering if
you could determine if you could discover life just from

(34:32):
what you measure using the Europa Clipper. Like if you
get a sample of this water, say, you know, we
get really lucky and the surface opens up and spews
a volcano, and the clipper flies by and snatches some
of that water, right, then you could study it with
this mass spec And so I asked my wife, who
is a microbiologist and she's an expert in these kind
of things, I said, could you conclusively say that we

(34:53):
that there's life and a drop of water from an
alien ocean just from understanding the mass spec information, just
from knowing basically what molecules are in there. But is
it is it going to have like a little cup
out there trying to catch water? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, it's
going to have it can sample and they'll be able
to do this measurement, this mass spec and tell us
life what molecules are in there and what are their

(35:15):
relative fractions? And could you tell if there was life? Unfortunately,
I don't think you could. Um. All you can tell
is like, here's a bunch of molecules, right, um. And
but you can there's not gonna be a microscope on board,
and you can't like see this thing, these little bugs.
If there's like microbes in there, you can't like see
them metabolizing or living or anything like that, unfortunately. And

(35:36):
one of the reasons is that there's just so much
complex stuff going on in life. You know, I asked
you the same question about, like, you know, pond water.
If you took a bunch of pond water from Earth
and put it through the same instrument, could you are
you conclusively there's life And there's just too much stuff
going on. We don't even really understand all the things
that are happening even here on Earth. It's such a
big messy blob. So I think you need to have

(35:58):
a microscope, and you need a sample of the water
before it got spewed outo space. So you're right, we
should go further and deeper, and we should dig into
those oceans. You would need to see the actual giant
space shark exactly exactly. But you know, how are you
going to land on a moon super far away and
drill like, you know, kilometers and kilometers into ice, Like

(36:21):
we can do something we've accomplished on Earth. Humans can
do it, Twine, I mean engineers can do it. Engineers. Yeah,
don't put the physicists in charge as the engineers. They
wan't to spend as much money and they'll get it done. Well.
They have plans for another one. They have plans for
a lander. Um, it's gonna go you know, years later,
and um, but this one is only going to be

(36:42):
on the surface for a few weeks because it's gonna
get fried by radiation and it's only going to drill
down about ten centimeters, not enough to go through the ice.
All right, Well, I think that's um, that's the mystery
of Europa. It's pretty cool to think that there is
a moon out there in our solar system with a
giant ocean that's just sitting there waiting for us to

(37:04):
go there and departs in it. I know, it's a
mystery it's close by, it's tantalizing, it's calling to us.
An amazing thing to me is we will know the answer,
and might take us five years or ten years or
forty years, but eventually humans or their robots will go
to your rope. But we'll drill into that ocean and
we will know if there's something swimming around slimy, you know,

(37:26):
listening to underground dance tracks and having a great time,
or if it's just another sterile blob out there in space.
There could be something living there right now. They could
be preparing something to be sent to Earth. What if
our what if our landers crossed in space and they're like, hey,
where are you going? It would be such a traggy

(37:47):
they crashed into each other and we would never know
where are you going? Man? I signaled lass, what are
you talking about? Crash and never never, at least they
would answer the question though, if there's life out there,
they're not great drivers, but at least they're alive. All right.

(38:08):
I hope that was a great europe Pan europe vacation.
European vacation for you guys out there, all right. Tune
in next time for more mysteries of the Universe. Thanks
for listening. If you still have a question after listening

(38:28):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
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email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
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(38:51):
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