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Speaker 1: Hey, you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: The vault hangs open. And of course today's Vault episode

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Speaker 1: is more than a regular Vault episode. It is a

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Speaker 1: cosmic odyssey. That's right. We are going to meet Jupiter's children,

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Speaker 1: the Galileean moons, the Jovian offspring. I don't have another synonym,

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Speaker 1: the moons of Jupiter. Yes, you will go there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like its own Solar system. Uh and and each

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Speaker 1: one is just a fascinating, literally otherworldly destination. We can't

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Speaker 1: wait till you get to the end and experience the

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Speaker 1: fiery planes of Io. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot com. It really is darker

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Speaker 1: out here in the outer Solar System. Your space freighter's

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Speaker 1: one remaining forest dome struggles but barely scrapes along, surviving

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Speaker 1: the plants still put out leaves. It seems only yesterday

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Speaker 1: that you defied orders to jettison the dome and return

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Speaker 1: to Earth immediately, but instead you absconded. You took the

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Speaker 1: plant life capsule, and you flew away away from the Sun,

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Speaker 1: out into the Outer Solar System. You have only the

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Speaker 1: forest and a pair of robots now to accompany you

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Speaker 1: through this long twilight. You'd hope to pass beyond Jupiter

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Speaker 1: and find refuge within the rings of Saturn, but the

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Speaker 1: great gas giant will not be defied. It's massive gravity

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Speaker 1: tugs at your humble freighter. The red eye of its

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Speaker 1: century spanning storm taunts you as Jupiter drags you into

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Speaker 1: the orbital realm of its many moons. But still there's hope.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps one of the four Eater moons the Galilean moons

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Speaker 1: will offer some place of refuge. But which of these

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Speaker 1: strange and hostile worlds might serve as a new home

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Speaker 1: for you and this geodesic refugium from Old Earth's lost

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Speaker 1: bio diversity. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: you should imagine yourself in the scenario we just described.

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Speaker 1: You're in some kind of spacecraft, hopefully one that has

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Speaker 1: some some plants along with it to keep you sustained

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Speaker 1: through the long Outer Solar System journey, and no hostiles

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Speaker 1: you know, more th onboard exactly, and you are caught

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Speaker 1: in the gravitational influence of the planet Jupiter. You didn't

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Speaker 1: mean to end up this way, but hey, you know,

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Speaker 1: Jupiter's gravity is something that's difficult to escape. And now

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Speaker 1: now you're stuck spiraling in towards Jupiter, slowly decaying in

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Speaker 1: your orbit, getting closer and closer all the time. But

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Speaker 1: one thing you have noticed is that you will get

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Speaker 1: to see a close up view and perhaps, if you're

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Speaker 1: lucky enough, maybe land on Jupiter's four largest moons, known

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Speaker 1: as the Galilean moons. This is the tour we want

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Speaker 1: to take you on today. Indeed, these moons are of

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Speaker 1: course of immense interest to science. Now, one analogy that

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Speaker 1: I think is interesting to help us understand the way

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Speaker 1: the Jupiter system and its gravitational influence works, is to

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Speaker 1: think of Jupiter kind of like a star within our

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Speaker 1: solar system, like it's its own star, and the planet,

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Speaker 1: the moons that are going around Jupiter a kind of

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Speaker 1: like planets orbiting this solar system within a solar system. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: because it is a massive planet, it's mass is three

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Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen point eight to eight uh times that

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Speaker 1: of Earth, and uh it's of course a gas giant

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Speaker 1: it's mostly gas. It might have a solid core about

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Speaker 1: the size of Earth at the center, possibly a rocky

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Speaker 1: ice covered core with insane levels of atmospheric pressure and

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Speaker 1: temperatures hotter than the surface of the Sun. And Jupiter

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Speaker 1: features no fewer than sixty seven lunar objects. That includes

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Speaker 1: fifty confirmed moons and seventeen unconfirmed or provisional moons. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and these are the ones we know about. Yeah, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they've got cool names like Metis and and Drastia.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there's also the There are also

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Speaker 1: three faint gossamer rings around Jupiter as well, certainly not

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Speaker 1: as robust as the Saturn's rings, but they're there nonetheless.

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Speaker 1: So we should back up and start at the beginning,

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Speaker 1: because we're learning a whole lot more about Jupiter's moons,

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Speaker 1: especially Jupiter's Galilean moons, the ones we're going to focus

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Speaker 1: on today, the four largest moons, But we were learning

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Speaker 1: a lot more about that recently. But we've known about

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Speaker 1: Jupiter since ancient times because you don't need a telescope

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Speaker 1: to see Jupiter. That's right, it's visible from Earth, and

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Speaker 1: so it factors into many ancient systems of astrology by

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Speaker 1: virtue virtue of that cosmology. The Roman name Jupiter stems

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Speaker 1: from the king of the gods, but the planet to

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Speaker 1: plays a role in many cultural beliefs. In Chinese astrology,

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Speaker 1: for instance, it's the character of Foo uh character of

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Speaker 1: foods tied to Jupiter, and he's the embodiment who is Foo.

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Speaker 1: He's the embodiment of good fortune uh, symbolized in a

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Speaker 1: scholars dress, and he's cradling a child. The three stars

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Speaker 1: that you'll often see. You often see these three statues

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Speaker 1: of these men in Chinese households, Chinese businesses uh. And

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Speaker 1: they each kind of they each represent a different form

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Speaker 1: of of idealized to success. So one is old and

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Speaker 1: wise one and one is a successful with his family,

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Speaker 1: and the other one is successful with business. I always

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Speaker 1: think it's interesting that we see this cross cultural phenomenon

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Speaker 1: of associating planetary bodies or objects in the sky with gods. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's fascinating because you see this in other systems as well.

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Speaker 1: For instance, the Vedic astrology, Jupiter is everything from the

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Speaker 1: dwarf incarnation of Vishnu to to Ganesha or sometimes Brahma.

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Speaker 1: So it it varies with within that system. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: that Jupiter always seems to have a pretty cushy role

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Speaker 1: within a given a given cultures astrology. Yeah, so we

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Speaker 1: mentioned that ancient cultures knew about Jupiter because you can

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Speaker 1: see it with the naked eye, But one of the

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Speaker 1: things they didn't know was much more about Jupiter other

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Speaker 1: than it being a point of light. That's right. For instance,

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Speaker 1: when we think of Jupiter, what what do we picture?

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Speaker 1: We picture that big, big gas giant with a big

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Speaker 1: red eye, right, red spot, Yeah, the giant red hurricane

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Speaker 1: on Jupiter's outer surface. Yeah, it's great to focus in

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Speaker 1: on on the red storm because it helps us really

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Speaker 1: understand Jupiter and our relationship to Jupiter. Because, for one,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, that storm has not been there forever, uh,

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Speaker 1: and it will not be there forever, but it spans centuries,

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Speaker 1: it's been there as long as we've been able to

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Speaker 1: see Jupiter in that kind of detail. Uh. And it

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Speaker 1: in the storm itself is two to three times the

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Speaker 1: size of Earth. Uh. So that helps put again the

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Speaker 1: massive scale of Jupiter. Can you imagine in reference if

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Speaker 1: on Earth we had storms that lasted for I don't know,

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Speaker 1: hundreds of years. I've I've thought about it, like when

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Speaker 1: you start teasing apart our weather system and you start

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Speaker 1: looking at the different the different systems involved there, and

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Speaker 1: the different factors that end up decreasing a hurricane's power.

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Speaker 1: You know, what if those were not there? What if

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Speaker 1: you had a scenario where the storm was essentially just

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Speaker 1: a permanent part of the planet as a mortal individual

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Speaker 1: would experience it. You know, that would be a great

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Speaker 1: set up for like a sci fi thriller. Imagine the

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Speaker 1: weather conditions on Earth change that such that tornadoes tend

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Speaker 1: not to dissipate on their own unless you have to.

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Speaker 1: You have to find a way to essentially dissipate tornadoes

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Speaker 1: by force. Yeah, indeed, and that that red storm on

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Speaker 1: Jupiter is dissipating slowly but still there as of this recording. Now,

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Speaker 1: as far as how far away Jupiter is, it's fo

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Speaker 1: four million miles seven million kilometers or five point two

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Speaker 1: astronomical units uh from the planet Earth. Okay, so we

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Speaker 1: know Jupiter is a gas giant, but you always wonder

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Speaker 1: what's inside a gas giant. I mean, is it all

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Speaker 1: just gas or is there something solid inside there? Well,

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Speaker 1: we don't know for certain. We Uh, the atmosphere of

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Speaker 1: Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium, but it might have

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Speaker 1: a solid core about the size of Earth, and this

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Speaker 1: might be an icy covered core with just really insane

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Speaker 1: levels of atmospheric pressure and temperature is hotter than the

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Speaker 1: surface of the Sun. So it's very much the core

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Speaker 1: and not you know, not the surface of the planet.

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Speaker 1: But but you know, you can't help it. Imagine, well,

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Speaker 1: what if what if you could what if you could

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Speaker 1: transport yourself down to the physical surface of this gas world.

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Speaker 1: It would of course be just unimaginable with one of

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Speaker 1: the most hostile environments you can even envision in the

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Speaker 1: Solar System. Yeah, it's pretty rough. And one of the

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Speaker 1: things that's going to come up repeatedly I think today

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Speaker 1: is how Jupiter, though it may look very serene and

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Speaker 1: beautiful to us, is it kind of meets that analogy

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Speaker 1: I worked out at the beginning about it being like

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Speaker 1: a star, because Jupiter is it has massive gravitational influence,

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Speaker 1: it's very electrically active, and it's just it's just full

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Speaker 1: of radiation. You don't want to go near Jupiter. Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: to be sucked into Jupiter would be to be sucked

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Speaker 1: into death, really, and that's one of the things we're

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Speaker 1: out lying in the intra material. Yeah, so it's really

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Speaker 1: unfortunate that we're slowly spiraling into Jupiter in today's thought experiment.

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Speaker 1: But but we should at least take the time to

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Speaker 1: appreciate the sites we'll see along the way. That's right.

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Speaker 1: And uh and and maybe if we're lucky, grasp onto

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Speaker 1: them and uh and seek refuge refuge upon them, because

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Speaker 1: even though they are all very hostile worlds in their

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Speaker 1: own right, uh, there's still a better bargain and they

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Speaker 1: still present a better chance for not only the potential

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Speaker 1: like the real life potential for for human visitation, but

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Speaker 1: in some of these cases we'll discuss the possibility for

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Speaker 1: extraterrestrial life. Yeah, Okay, Now, Jupiter is not entirely unexplored today.

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Speaker 1: We've actually sent quite a few probes Jupiter's way that

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Speaker 1: have that have orbited Jupiter and made various observations about

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Speaker 1: it and it's major satellites, right, that's right. To date,

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Speaker 1: NASA has sent nine space missions to or buy the

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Speaker 1: gas giant. So we're talking to the the Pioneer Program seventy four,

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Speaker 1: the Voyager Program seventy nine. Ulysses into Cassini in two

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Speaker 1: thousand new horizons in two thousand seven. Also, Galileo is

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Speaker 1: a big one, and that's a through two thousand three Juno.

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Speaker 1: That one's of course a very current that's two thousands sixteen.

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Speaker 1: And uh, there are various additional missions and schemes for

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Speaker 1: missions in the works. Oh yeah, I know the e

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Speaker 1: s A is working on the Juice Explorer, right, the

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Speaker 1: Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, which I don't know. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if I agree with the wisdom of calling it Juice.

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Speaker 1: It's it seems just a little too cool, like like

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Speaker 1: it's like the name doesn't need to be that cool

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Speaker 1: because it's going to Jupiter exactly know, it's going to

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Speaker 1: the moons of Jupiter. That alone is is just mind bending. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so hopefully it's going to explore three of the

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Speaker 1: four main moons we're going to talk about today, the

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Speaker 1: icy moons of the icy Galilean moons of Jupiter. And

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Speaker 1: it's launching in two right, Yeah, I believe that's the

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Speaker 1: current plant. And NASA is currently putting together the Europa

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Speaker 1: Multiple flat by mission for the same time period. Alright,

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Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier thinking about the Jupiter system like

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Speaker 1: a solar system within a solar system. And if you

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Speaker 1: do that, of course you've lots of bodies out there.

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Speaker 1: We mentioned the sixties seven known satellites of Jupiter, things

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Speaker 1: that are orbiting, but a lot of them are very small.

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Speaker 1: If we do think about Jupiter like a solar system,

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Speaker 1: it has four main planets. That's right, they stand out

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Speaker 1: and the most due they're just their sheer size. And

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Speaker 1: these are Calisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io. So you can

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Speaker 1: think of them as it's four scoops on a on

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Speaker 1: a Jovian ice cream cone, and you get the following

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Speaker 1: flavors of scoops. You'll get salty craters, magnets, ice, and

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Speaker 1: of course lava lava. That's a good flavor. Now, Robert,

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Speaker 1: did you know that you seem to be you're a

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Speaker 1: fan of ice cream metaphors? I did. I use them

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Speaker 1: when thinking about planets. I use them when thinking about

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Speaker 1: the brains. Though. Is this a good way of explaining

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Speaker 1: things to children? Did they just really grasp onto ice

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Speaker 1: cream metaphors? You know? I don't know. I guess it's

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Speaker 1: a good way to explain it to the child within Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean maybe it comes back to sort of like

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Speaker 1: a Sesame Street mentality. You know, like I grew up

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Speaker 1: watching these visual representations, and it seems like it seems

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Speaker 1: like there were more than one Sesame Street skit that

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Speaker 1: had ice cream in them, So maybe that that ended

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Speaker 1: up sticking. I guess that does make sense. But it

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Speaker 1: is interesting to think about the flavors of each of

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Speaker 1: these moons because they kind of do each have their

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Speaker 1: own flavor, especially the inner two I think, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: each one is is its own weird world with its

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Speaker 1: own properties, its own unique landscape, and that's why we

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Speaker 1: wanted to take our listeners on a journey through each one. Now,

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Speaker 1: one thing we should mention about all of these worlds

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Speaker 1: that's kind of different than most of the inner planets

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Speaker 1: of the Solar system that we think about that have

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Speaker 1: like a soul, uh you know, a solar rotational day,

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Speaker 1: is that all of these moons are tidally locked with Jupiter.

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Speaker 1: The same side of the Moon always faces in towards Jupiter. Yes,

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Speaker 1: almost like they're completely obedient. They dare not look away

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Speaker 1: from their their master, right yeah. Or or it's kind

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Speaker 1: of like in in Mario, you know, they're afraid to

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Speaker 1: turn their back on the ghosts because when the ghost

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Speaker 1: comes to get you. So we mentioned that these are

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Speaker 1: referred to as the Galilean moons, and we should probably

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Speaker 1: explain first how they were discovered and why they're called

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Speaker 1: the Galilean moons. Today. The obvious conclusion you might reaches

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Speaker 1: that they're named after Galileo. You know, he's an astronomer,

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Speaker 1: and if you assume to that, you'd be right. That's

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Speaker 1: where the name comes from. That's right. And I think

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Speaker 1: most of you are probably familiar at least a little

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Speaker 1: bit with Italian astronomer slash heretic Galileo galile He who

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Speaker 1: was born in fifteen sixty four died in sixteen forty two,

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Speaker 1: and he was a true renaissance man, uh in the Renaissance.

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Speaker 1: He was also a physicist and engineer, a philosopher, a mathematician,

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Speaker 1: a true superstar in the history of science and really

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Speaker 1: in the history of human civilization in general. It's really

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Speaker 1: it's really difficult to to overstate the importance the importance

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Speaker 1: of Galileo. Yeah, I mean often today scientific struggles against

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Speaker 1: ingrained orthodoxy are framed in terms of Galileo's struggle against

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Speaker 1: the the scientific and religious orthodoxy of the day. Both

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Speaker 1: of which opposed him. Yeah, well, our listeners a little

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Speaker 1: more about the controversy surrounding helio centritism. All right, yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: so you'll probably associate Galileo with helio centrism. The idea

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Speaker 1: that the planets in the Solar System go around the

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Speaker 1: Sun could have also the day in the at the

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Speaker 1: time meant that everything in the universe goes around the Sun.

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Speaker 1: Of course, now we know that's not correct, but we

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Speaker 1: understanding of the universe. But it was certainly onto something

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Speaker 1: in the idea that the Earth goes around the Sun

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Speaker 1: and not the other way around the Earth end all

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Speaker 1: the other bodies in the Solar System. And so Galileo

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Speaker 1: did not come up with the idea of heliocentrism. He

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Speaker 1: didn't invent this. This was a Copernican idea. It was

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Speaker 1: already in circulation, and Galileo was one of the Copernican

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Speaker 1: astronomers of the seventeenth century. However, a version of the

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Speaker 1: geocentric Aristotelian Ptolemaic model was what was dominant in the day,

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Speaker 1: was what most people believed. And in this model, the

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Speaker 1: Earth is It's not just that the Sun goes around

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Speaker 1: all that. It's that the Earth is literally the center

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Speaker 1: of motion in the universe. So by by a principle

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Speaker 1: all goes around us. So we're what everything else is

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Speaker 1: focused on. And the role of Galileo's discovery is that

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Speaker 1: in observing the sphere of Jupiter's gravitational influence, Galileo provided

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Speaker 1: new evidence against that type of geocentrism that dominated in

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Speaker 1: his day, and one one piece of evidence became apparent

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Speaker 1: in January six when Galileo made his first round of

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Speaker 1: observations through a telescope looking at Jupiter. So Galileo also,

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Speaker 1: like not inventing helio centrism, did not invent the telescope,

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Speaker 1: but what he did do was improved it. He made

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Speaker 1: a series of improvements to a design of the telescope

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Speaker 1: that allowed him to resolve farther objects than ever before,

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Speaker 1: and by the time Galileo got the magnification power of

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Speaker 1: the planet Jupiter and he saw something really weird. As

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Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, you can see Jupiter with the naked eye, right, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And so ancient astronomers had been seeing Jupiter for a

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Speaker 1: long time. They're already aware of its existence. But what

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Speaker 1: Galileo saw when he focused on Jupiter was interesting. He

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Speaker 1: saw stars. He saw three stars lined up right next

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Speaker 1: to Jupiter, almost as if strung along a spear extending

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Speaker 1: out through Jupiter's equator. So Galileo made a note of this,

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Speaker 1: and he decided to check back on it later. Now,

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Speaker 1: if those had been stars that were just in the background,

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Speaker 1: you know, if they just happened to line up with

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Speaker 1: Jupiter from the star field beyond the next time you

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Speaker 1: looked at Jupiter, they shouldn't be there, right, because Jupiter

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Speaker 1: should have moved on relative to the background starfield. Right.

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Speaker 1: They shouldn't be following the planet because there would be

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Speaker 1: distant opjecs ex on the planet exactly. But instead the

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Speaker 1: stars followed Jupiter. Where Jupiter went, the spear of stars

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Speaker 1: followed and they change their positions relative to Jupiter. And

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Speaker 1: so after some observation, Scalio realized that there are actually

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Speaker 1: four stars on this spear, not just three. And the

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Speaker 1: conclusion he realized was that these weren't stars. The star

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Speaker 1: spear was not a star spear, it was a moon spear.

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Speaker 1: These are moons that are orbiting Jupiter the same way

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Speaker 1: Earth's moon orbits the Earth. And so, okay, well, so

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Speaker 1: Jupiter has moons. What does that mean for the cosmological

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Speaker 1: debate of the day. Well, if there are moons orbiting Jupiter,

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Speaker 1: it disproves the Aristotelian principle that Earth is the universal

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Speaker 1: hub of motion of planetary bodies. Those moons don't orbit

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Speaker 1: the Earth, they orbit something else. And so this gives

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Speaker 1: you a kind of general principle of things orbiting things

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Speaker 1: rather than everything orbiting Earth. And it's clear that there's

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Speaker 1: more than one center of motion possible. There at least

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Speaker 1: two that now that we know of Jupiter and Earth.

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Speaker 1: And if there are two, you can assume they're probably

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Speaker 1: more than two. And this eventually led to the type

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Speaker 1: of thinking that showed us what was really out there

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Speaker 1: in terms of heliocentrism in the way gravity works. Now,

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Speaker 1: I should also add that the discovery of Jupiter's moons

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Speaker 1: wasn't unique to Galileo, and he wasn't even necessarily the

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Speaker 1: only or first person to have discovered them. I found

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Speaker 1: accounts that at least one other guy, a German astronomer

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Speaker 1: named Simon Marius, discovered them independently at around the same time.

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Speaker 1: And it's also been suggested that an ancient Chinese astronomer

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Speaker 1: named Gone Day might have discovered one of the moons

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Speaker 1: of Jupiter in the fourth century b c e. When

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Speaker 1: he said that he saw around Jupiter a small red star. Now, technically,

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Speaker 1: under the right circumstances, the moons of Jupiter should be

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Speaker 1: visible to the naked eye from Earth, and the only

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Speaker 1: thing that really prevents it is that Jupiter is too bright.

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Speaker 1: You look up at Jupiter and it's it's so bright

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Speaker 1: that it drowns out other tiny points of light that

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Speaker 1: are close to it, so you can't usually see them.

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Speaker 1: But if Jupiter weren't there, you should be able to

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Speaker 1: see these objects. Oh but you know what, I think

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Speaker 1: that sound means that we're coming up on Jupiter's first

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Speaker 1: gal and moon spiraling in from the outside, and that's

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Speaker 1: going to be the moon Callisto. Yes, and I think

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Speaker 1: this is this is a pretty good pit stop to consider.

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Speaker 1: So Callisto is about the size of the planet Mercury.

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Speaker 1: It's the third largest moon in the entire Solar System,

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Speaker 1: and it's the outermost of the four Galileean moons. As

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Speaker 1: we've discussed, uh, it orbits beyond Jupiter's main radiation belts.

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Speaker 1: So Jupiter is highly radioactive, it's putting out a lot

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Speaker 1: of scary stuff, but Callisto is far enough away that

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Speaker 1: it's relatively safe. That's right. Yeah, we're we're outside of

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Speaker 1: that that death lea, the death zone. Yeah. It's also

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Speaker 1: the most heavily cratered o chick in the Solar system.

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Speaker 1: So that's interesting. Yeah, this is this is really fascinating.

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Speaker 1: So as we as we as we we get closer

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Speaker 1: and closer, as we're able to observe the surface of

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Speaker 1: Callisto and maybe i know, hopefully even get out even

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Speaker 1: land our vessel and find a semi permanent home on

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Speaker 1: this uh this this strange moon. You would find that

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Speaker 1: the surface, to to walk the surface of Callisto would

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Speaker 1: be to walk a dead landscape of craters and occasional

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Speaker 1: small icy peaks. And this surface, this landscape has not

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Speaker 1: changed in four billion years. Yeah, that's one of the

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Speaker 1: things that we often associate having heavy cratering with, right,

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Speaker 1: like more cratering. You see the older the surfaces, because

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Speaker 1: what does cratering mean? It's been like that a long

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Speaker 1: time without any kind of repaving. That's right. This is

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Speaker 1: the last time Callisto suffered any extensive resurfacing was four

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Speaker 1: billion years ago. And there are no plate tectonics, there

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Speaker 1: are no volcanoes, a no active geology to alter the landscape.

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Speaker 1: So it seems like a kind of quiet, serene, dead Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's like a dinosaur world. Right. It's like

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Speaker 1: the moon itself is only four point five billion years old,

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Speaker 1: and again it hasn't changed in four billion um. It's

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Speaker 1: also the darkest of the four moons that we're discussing here,

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Speaker 1: in the least dents. So Callisto's composition is about half

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Speaker 1: water ice and half rocky material, and the mean surface

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Speaker 1: temperature of Callisto is negative two and eighteen point forty

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Speaker 1: seven degrees fahrenheit, and the thin atmosphere consists of mostly

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Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. Okay, so it may be very quiet and

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Speaker 1: serene on this on this seemingly dead rock. But should

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Speaker 1: we take away from that that Callisto is definitely not

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Speaker 1: a place to look for signs of life. Well, I

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Speaker 1: think we've both watched enough science fiction to know that

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Speaker 1: that world that you land on it seems dead is

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Speaker 1: never It's not always really that dead. I have a

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Speaker 1: sidetrack to take here. Do you notice how in science fiction,

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Speaker 1: whenever you land on a planet that does turn out

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Speaker 1: to have hostile aliens on it, you never land where

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Speaker 1: the aliens are doing something. Right, then you always land

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Speaker 1: in somewhere where there's no sign of them, and it's

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Speaker 1: only after exploring for a while that you run into them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it would be it would be interesting to have that

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Speaker 1: story where the ship touches down and all the hideous

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Speaker 1: night creatures are already out, you know, viciously killing the

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Speaker 1: eight creatures that lived there during the day. I like

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Speaker 1: how the the viciously killing motion you made was like

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Speaker 1: lopping with shears. Yeah, Like I'm thinking like two big

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Speaker 1: old pincher arms that are just for stabbing apes. Um,

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Speaker 1: so we're not thinking about big pincher arms on Callisto.

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Speaker 1: But there might be something to look for here, right,

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Speaker 1: That's right. Surprisingly, for a world that we've described in

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Speaker 1: these terms, you know, it's just being this dead crater landscape.

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Speaker 1: There is some talk of life on or more specifically

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Speaker 1: within Callisto. Specifically the stability of an electric, salty subsurface ocean.

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Speaker 1: So you're probably wondering, well, where do we Where did

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Speaker 1: we dream up this idea? How do you say? Who

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Speaker 1: says yeah, because you could say you couldn't you say

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Speaker 1: that about any world like, oh, well, maybe there's an

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Speaker 1: ocean beneath mercury. Now, so there's life on the moon.

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Speaker 1: Come on, it's the spiders from that what's that horrible movie?

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Speaker 1: Horrible movie with spiders. Pick one. It's a rich, rich tapestry. Okay, sorry,

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Speaker 1: who said this about Callisto? Well, this comes from a

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Speaker 1: doctor Krishawn K. Corona of U c l A and

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Speaker 1: his colleagues who examined Galileo's measurements, Not not Galileo the scientists,

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Speaker 1: but Galileo the spacecraft that we mentioned earlier. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: examined galileos measurements of Callisto's magnetic field, and they noticed

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Speaker 1: that the magnetic field fluctuated in time with Jupiter's rotation. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so what does that mean. It means that Jupiter's powerful

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Speaker 1: magnetic field was creating electrical currents inside of Callisto, and

424
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: those currents, in turn created a fluctuating magnetic field. Around Callisto.

425
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: Now for that to happen, you need a conduct her

426
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:10,679
Speaker 1: and that thin uh atmosphere crater skate that we've touched

427
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:13,440
Speaker 1: on earlier, that's just not gonna cut it. What would work, however,

428
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: is a salty layer of melted ice down there, a

429
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: subsurface ocean electrolytes. Yeah, it's what alien life craves. Yeah,

430
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: a a a sub world gatorade ocean, if you will,

431
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: so cautiously, very cautiously, there is the potential for extreme

432
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 1: file life within this theorized subsurface ocean. There's liquid water,

433
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:41,679
Speaker 1: perhaps salty, there's energy. So we'd be talking micro if

434
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: we were to you know, consider life using our only

435
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: model of it, which is Earth life, we'd be talking

436
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: micro organisms like our keya bacteria, salt loving bacteria. There

437
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:56,439
Speaker 1: wouldn't be any gigantic electronic moon whales. There wouldn't be

438
00:25:56,480 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: any uh, there's certainly no you know, mandible ape stab creatures.

439
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: But of and of course, it would also be very cold,

440
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 1: and the ocean would only be heated by radioactive elements.

441
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 1: So it's a very very very very hostile environment that

442
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:14,359
Speaker 1: we're picturing here. But based on our understanding of life

443
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 1: on Earth, it would not be impossible for something to

444
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: have evolved and and even thrive there. Still. Yeah, and

445
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: though we do want to point out that when we

446
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:27,160
Speaker 1: think about what hostile to life is, we're thinking about

447
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,000
Speaker 1: hostile to Earth life, right, And of course the Earth

448
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,640
Speaker 1: environment might be incredibly hostile to organisms adapted to some

449
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: other kind of world. So, like you know, on Earth,

450
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 1: on Earth we have oxygen and oxygen atmosphere. Oxygen is

451
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: nice to us because we're adapted to it, but it

452
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 1: could be highly corrosive to some other type of organism. Yeah, indeed,

453
00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:50,719
Speaker 1: so you know, with all this, it's it's relative based

454
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 1: on our human perspective and our our preference for all

455
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: things that support human life. Now, as far as the

456
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 1: exploration goes, we've we've had nothing Callisto specific in the past,

457
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:07,880
Speaker 1: but most missions to or by Jupiter involves some level

458
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:10,439
Speaker 1: of callisto study. I mean, you're you're you're swinging by,

459
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: it's in the neighborhood, it's one of the four largest moons.

460
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:15,640
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna get some data off of it. Now,

461
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,440
Speaker 1: I know we mentioned earlier the juice. The juice is

462
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 1: thinking about studying icy moons of Jupiter and that would

463
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:25,640
Speaker 1: include Callisto right indeed, and then as far as considering

464
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: any kind of far future visitation or specific study there,

465
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: NASA's two thousand three Human Outer Space Exploration or HOPE

466
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: project suggested that in a hypothetical five Jovian mission UH,

467
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:44,919
Speaker 1: Callisto could serve as a base of operations UH for

468
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 1: study of Jupiter UH as well as other know outer

469
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: Solar System concerns thanks to its stable geology and low

470
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 1: radiation so again, nothing's changing their no earthquakes, there no volcanoes,

471
00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: and you're outside of that death zone for the most part.

472
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: So it would be a great place to UH to

473
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: UH to tell operate say a Europa submarine we're going

474
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: to do rope in a little bit a little bit

475
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,120
Speaker 1: or or other gallee and noon explorations. It could also

476
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: serve as a way station for outward bound vessels. I

477
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: think that teleoperation idea is very interesting in the future

478
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 1: of space exploration because one of the things you often

479
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: run into and space exploration is well, Okay, when you've

480
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: got a job that's very dangerous and and requires an

481
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 1: extremely hardy explorer, you think, okay, we need a robot, right,

482
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: But then when you've got a job that requires quick

483
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: thinking and adaptability, you think you need a human explorer

484
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 1: because I mean, a robot is not going to be

485
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: able to figure out how to get around a problem

486
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: very easily if you didn't anticipate it in advance. And

487
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: a good way I've heard of of bridging this gap

488
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: is having teleoperated robots. So instead of putting a human

489
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: on the surface of Europa, you have a human in

490
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: some nearby vessel, in a you know, spacecraft orbiting Europa

491
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: or some or year by on Callisto maybe, and they

492
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 1: are essentially by by avatar type of control making a

493
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: robot do what it needs to do, but also being

494
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: able to adapt to unexpected conditions and problems. So you

495
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 1: send a robot to Europa, and you send maybe like

496
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: a human brain and a scream canister to Callisto to

497
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: remote control the robot in Europe. I feel like after

498
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: reading about Callisto, though, I kind of felt bad for

499
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: Callisto reading this proposal, because I'm like, you landed on Callisto.

500
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: Callisto's cool, Callisto's fascinating. Don't get to Callisto and then

501
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 1: dream of Europa. That's kind of inconsiderate. That's like, you're

502
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: you're hanging out with this friend, don't text that one

503
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: the other one during the hangout. But I mean, what

504
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 1: if this other friend you're texting is just way more

505
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: likely to have life on them. It's true, it's true. Okay,

506
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna take a break, but when we

507
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to get into the three inner

508
00:29:51,360 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: Galilean moons where things really start to get interesting. Alright,

509
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: we're back. We've left Callisto, We've left that dead, cratered

510
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: world and it's a potential salt ocean hidden beneath its surface.

511
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: What is our next destination in our journey? While our

512
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: next destination isn't going to be all that different from

513
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:22,560
Speaker 1: Callisto in many respects. So we we left one cold, icy,

514
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: rocky world and we're headed to another cold, icy, rocky world.

515
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: But this one is Ganymede. Now, what the basic stats

516
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: on Ganymy Ganymede is about in diameter about three thousand,

517
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy three miles across or five thousand,

518
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty eight kilometers. This makes it the

519
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: largest moon in orbit around Jupiter, and not just there

520
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: in fact, it's the largest moon in the entire Solar System.

521
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: It's bigger than Pluto, bigger than the planet Mercury, but

522
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: not nearly as massive due to low density composition. So

523
00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: you take an interior cross section of this planet, imagine

524
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: you could sheer away half of it and look at

525
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: an interior profile. You've got an iron core kind of

526
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: like Earth has, but it's also possibly partially molten iron,

527
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: and that's important for something I'm going to get to

528
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:16,040
Speaker 1: in a second. Then around that iron core you've got

529
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 1: a layer of rocky inner mantle that's so like silicate

530
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 1: rock standard rock, and then around that is a layer

531
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: of water ice, probably also some salty liquid water. And

532
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 1: then finally on top you've got an ice crust that

533
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: shows signs of age, craters and scarring. So the molten

534
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: metal in the iron core is probably why Ganymede has

535
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: its own magneto sphere like Earth, and and the fact

536
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 1: that it has its own magnetosphere is interesting. A lot

537
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: of objects in the Solar System don't, but don't have

538
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: a magnetic shield that extends outward from the planet, which

539
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: makes possible visitation to those worlds all the more problematic.

540
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking this. I mean, we missed Colisto. This

541
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: one sounds like a good place to touch down. What's

542
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: it like on the surface. Okay, well, let's take a

543
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: little tour of the surface of Ganymede. First of all,

544
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: you're gonna notice as a thin oxygen atmosphere. But the

545
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: emphasis is on thin. It's not thick enough that you

546
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 1: could breathe it. But there is gonna be a little

547
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 1: bit of gas around there. And imagine you step out

548
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: of the spacecraft, say Anamde, so you're walking on ice.

549
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: The crust of the planet is ice. It's this dark,

550
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: endless plane of ice, possibly with some rocky elements here

551
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: and there, but mostly it's going to be ice. It's

552
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: like a frozen pond extending over the whole planet. So

553
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: bring ice skates. Maybe, Actually I wonder, you know, if

554
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 1: so ice is slippery here on Earth, is ice slippery

555
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: on Ganymede. I have no idea why I would even

556
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: wonder that. I would have to assume the physics are

557
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: somewhat similar, but maybe not. I mean, it depends. Yeah,

558
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: there's it's easy to take for granted something like ice skating,

559
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: But ice skating it's going to depend on on what

560
00:32:57,320 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: the gravity is like on the world, right, Yeah, yeah,

561
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: gravity and the surface conditions. Now, one thing actually I

562
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: think is that ice is less slippery the colder it

563
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: gets outside, right, like an extremely cold conditions, You're less

564
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: likely to slip on the ice. I feel like the

565
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: novel that Forever War went into this a little bit.

566
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: I believe like there's a section where he was getting

567
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: into like the physics of being a visitor to an

568
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: icy world and how slippery would be. But if then

569
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: a long time since I've read that left up here

570
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: from listeners, yeah, I would like to hear if you

571
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: have ideas about that. But anyway, you're out on this

572
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: ice crust, and one thing you can notice is that

573
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: you can, as you travel the surface of Ganymede move

574
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: from different kinds of landscapes into one another. So Ganymede

575
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: has interlocking sections of an old face and a young face.

576
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 1: Both are made of ice, but the old face is dark,

577
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,720
Speaker 1: covered in ancient craters from impacts over billions of years.

578
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: It's what we talked about earlier. You know, the more

579
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: craters you see on a surface, typically the older it

580
00:33:56,680 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 1: is because it's been there to absorb blows from the

581
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 1: shoe gallery of the Solar System for a longer period

582
00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: of time. Yeah, be aware of those planets where you

583
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: don't see craters everywhere because something's happening there. Yeah. The

584
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 1: craters on Ganymede I've read, are actually relatively smooth and gentle,

585
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 1: and this possibly might be from millions of years of

586
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: ice settling. So unlike rock where there's a crater, it's

587
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,000
Speaker 1: a brittle crater with edges, and it remains that way

588
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 1: for a long time. With ice, over a long period

589
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: of time, even though it's very cold, there is some

590
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:33,240
Speaker 1: kind of almost kind of gelatinous quality to the ice

591
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: over long enough time scales so be kind of like

592
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: an ice jelly. It's kind of like the way glaciers

593
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: can deform over a long period of um. But then

594
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: there's also a younger ice plaine on the surface of Ganymede,

595
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: so you can move from one dark, scarred plane to

596
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,760
Speaker 1: another one, and these these younger ice planes are brighter

597
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: in color, with fewer craters, and instead of craters, you'd

598
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: walk through these deep wooves known as sulki. Each each

599
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 1: of these it's a sulcus, is this groove running along

600
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 1: the surface of the planet. It's like a wrinkle in

601
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: the face of Ganymede, the sulci of Ganymede. I like it. Yeah,

602
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. And what are those caused by? Well, it's

603
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: not exactly known, but I think the main idea I've

604
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 1: read is that it's caused by internal stresses, entitled forces

605
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: acting upon the planet, kind of causing wrinkles and perturbations

606
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: in the crust. Okay, well, what are the natives like here? Well,

607
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: if there are any, and there actually is a possibility,

608
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:34,839
Speaker 1: it's going to be kind of like what we talked

609
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:38,240
Speaker 1: about with callisso a similar kind of situations. Because findings

610
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 1: announced by NASA and from the Hubble Space Telescope showed

611
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 1: that Ganymede probably has liquid underground oceans sandwich between I

612
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,359
Speaker 1: see layers, And they figured this out by looking at

613
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:54,640
Speaker 1: at the aurora around Ganymede and figured out that you know,

614
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:58,400
Speaker 1: to see the to see the charged particle displays that

615
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,320
Speaker 1: we see around the outside of Ghanamy, we would probably

616
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 1: be expected that we would probably expect that to be

617
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:07,880
Speaker 1: caused by liquid oceans under the surface. Uh, and anywhere

618
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:10,400
Speaker 1: of course that there's liquid water. We kind of have

619
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,920
Speaker 1: to wonder is there a possibility, And so that's the idea,

620
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 1: and it's another case of subsurface liquid water that may

621
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 1: indeed harbor microbial life. Now, past observations of Ganymede have

622
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,320
Speaker 1: been done by the some of the same missions we've

623
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:27,719
Speaker 1: talked about in the past, the usual suspects here, and

624
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: of course Ganymede is one of the potential targets of

625
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:34,520
Speaker 1: Juice that the juice, so it's we mentioned earlier, but

626
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: it's part of the Essays Cosmic Vision program. And the

627
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,000
Speaker 1: idea is that the probe would launch in two putting

628
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,359
Speaker 1: it on course to arrive in the Jupiter System around

629
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: twenty and it would make observations of Jupiter itself but

630
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: also Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. And the main focus on

631
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: Ganymede would be to learn more about its underground oceans

632
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: and whether they have the potential to sustain life. But

633
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,400
Speaker 1: in addition to that, there are some Russian science tists

634
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,880
Speaker 1: who want to put a lander on Ganymede. Again, this

635
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: would be to study potential habitable habitability. But this wouldn't

636
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:08,760
Speaker 1: just be a fly by. This would be a probe

637
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:12,760
Speaker 1: settling down on the surface and uh, and using various

638
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: tools to figure out what's going on on the surface

639
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: of Ganymede and and what might be going on under

640
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 1: the surface. In indeed, that's a tantalizing part, right to

641
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:24,239
Speaker 1: to not only arrive there but too, but but to

642
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: but to actually dig down into the surface and see

643
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 1: if these oceans are really there and then what it

644
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: consists up. Yeah, And of course Ganymede is not the

645
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: only place where scientists want to drill under some ice

646
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 1: and look at habitability concerns. In fact, there's an even

647
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:43,879
Speaker 1: better spot to study that, and it's the one that's

648
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:47,719
Speaker 1: coming up next on our death spiral into Jupiter. That's right,

649
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: Europa in Europa is quite a big one in our

650
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: in our consideration of Jovian moods. Yeah, if you read

651
00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 1: science fiction, I bet this is the most likely one

652
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 1: you've read a story about. And it's often I would say,

653
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 1: would you agree that of all the places in the

654
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:07,919
Speaker 1: Solar System, it's the one where astrobiologists most often talk

655
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: about the possibility of finding life. Yes, this is definitely

656
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 1: the one where where that has the most excitement around it.

657
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:18,239
Speaker 1: So Robert introduced us to this moon. We're coming up

658
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: on now right. So while the surface of Europa appears

659
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: to be a solid sheet of ice, scientists believe this

660
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: outer shell hides a deep liquid ocean or an ocean

661
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: of of ice slush underneath, the heated by tidal friction

662
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: and thermal vents sixty two miles beneath Europa's ice caps.

663
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:40,280
Speaker 1: So Europa boasts a layered structure like Earth that consists

664
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,800
Speaker 1: of an iron core, a rock mantle around that core,

665
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 1: a thick soft ice layer, and a thin crust of

666
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 1: impure water ice over again what is probably a global

667
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,880
Speaker 1: subsurface water layer. Yeah, and so though Europa is a

668
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 1: little bit smaller than Earth's moon, based on the Galileo data,

669
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:00,840
Speaker 1: you know, the data from the Galileta robe again not

670
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:04,920
Speaker 1: from Galileo galile uh, scientists think that Europa actually has

671
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: more water on it than Earth does, which is pretty

672
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 1: incredible because Earth is often known as the water planet.

673
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: So if you you are the aliens from signs, it

674
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:18,359
Speaker 1: is even worse to try colonizing Europa than Earth. Now

675
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: that ocean finding, as with Callisto's suspected subwa subsurface waters,

676
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:27,920
Speaker 1: come down to the Galileo spacecraft's measurements, specifically the manner

677
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: in which Jupiter's magnetic field was disrupted in space around Europa.

678
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 1: And the theory is that the field is induced by

679
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:41,720
Speaker 1: a large body of electrocly conductive salty fluid beneath the surface. Now,

680
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: if we're to actually move in a little closer, if

681
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,879
Speaker 1: we were to touch down on Europa, what would we find. Well,

682
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: the surface is apparently a vast landscape of frozen ice

683
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,319
Speaker 1: and it's criss crossed by long linear fractures and these

684
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:58,799
Speaker 1: are caused by tidal flexing, the tidal force caused by

685
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: Jupiter's gravity. There are very few craters to be seen

686
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 1: bloomishing this landscape, as as the surface is actually quite young,

687
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 1: only for million years old, which is kind of creepy

688
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,800
Speaker 1: when you think about it. Yeah, this this ancient planet.

689
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: We've never been there and it's got a young surface. Yeah,

690
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: that's that's the first red red flag for any sci

691
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 1: fi visitors. Right now. You'll also spot reddish brown materials

692
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: and some of the fractures and splotchy deposits, and we're

693
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:30,319
Speaker 1: not yet sure what those are exactly. It might be

694
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 1: magnesium sulfate, maybe sulfuric acid hydrate. You know, I think

695
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: I've read that recent research suggested that the dark discolorations

696
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 1: on Europea's ice crust could be caused by sea salt,

697
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:45,160
Speaker 1: supposed to radiation. Yet another piece of evidence that the

698
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: water below the ice crust might be salty. Well, there

699
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: you go. Now you'll also come across pits and domes

700
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: in the ice that suggest that it could be slowly

701
00:40:55,560 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: turning over or convecting due to heat from the possible

702
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: oceans below. Or maybe they're just the dome cathedrals and

703
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: fighting pit of some weird off world elder species right now. Now, wait,

704
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:12,800
Speaker 1: a second heat coming from the oceans below. Now that's interesting. Yeah, yeah,

705
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 1: that's because if there's heat, that's one more possibly. Not

706
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:18,399
Speaker 1: only do we have a salty ocean, but there's there's heat,

707
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,760
Speaker 1: there's energy their energy rich, yeah, energy rich, more potential

708
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,839
Speaker 1: for life. Now there's also the chaos terrain. This is

709
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:29,320
Speaker 1: one of my favorite terms in astronomy. Is it astronomy,

710
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:33,879
Speaker 1: I don't know, astrogeology, planetology, Yeah, I guess so. Yeah,

711
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: the chaos terrain. This is a broken, blocky landscape covered

712
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 1: in the mysterious reddish material that we mentioned earlier. So

713
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 1: it might be spots of geogeologic activity. It might be

714
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:48,800
Speaker 1: places where the ice has collapsed into lakes in the ice.

715
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,399
Speaker 1: And it's also possible that we're just merely over interpreting

716
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: h imperfections in the Galileo spacecraft imagery. Oh yes, and

717
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:01,800
Speaker 1: is revealed in the in two thousand thirteen Hubble telescope data.

718
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 1: Europa is actively venting plumes of water into space. So

719
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 1: this means that it is definitely geologically active. So it's

720
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,280
Speaker 1: like geyser is shooting off of the Yeah. Yeah, So

721
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:16,240
Speaker 1: so we've got that to think of two, like space

722
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:19,719
Speaker 1: geysers shooting water into space. So does it have an

723
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 1: atmosphere at all? It does. It has a molecular oxygen

724
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 1: and O two atmosphere. Hydrogen floats away from the planet

725
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: because it's too light and collects in a gas torus

726
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 1: around the planet. Less impressive than than the one on

727
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,839
Speaker 1: Io that will discuss, but still pretty pretty interesting nonetheless.

728
00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: And as far as size goes for your Europa, it's

729
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: slightly smaller than Earth's moons. So Europa is the smallest

730
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 1: of the four Gallean moons. Yes, but size doesn't necessarily

731
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: matter when it comes to subsurface life, that's right, So

732
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: if Europa's oceans do exist, and we're pretty sure they do,

733
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: it's I think most scientists agree that's what's what's going

734
00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: on under there. Then the tides might also create volcanic

735
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:07,759
Speaker 1: or hydrothermal activity on the sea floor, supplying nutrients that

736
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: could make the ocean sustainable for living things. Yeah. So

737
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: often when you want to imagine what kind of alien

738
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:18,360
Speaker 1: life could exist on place, in places other than Earth,

739
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: it's a good idea to look at extrema files on Earth.

740
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: What exists in some of the most difficult conditions on Earth.

741
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: And one of the things to look out on Earth

742
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 1: might be the life that is sustained by hydrothermal vents

743
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:33,399
Speaker 1: on the ocean's floor. Yes, we're talking about deep, dark

744
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:36,799
Speaker 1: places where really the only font of energy is is

745
00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: the the the hydrothermal vent. But that is, you know,

746
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: pumping out some very high temperatures in an otherwise cold

747
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 1: and light lift environment. And uh, and there are there

748
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: are organisms that have evolved to thrive in that environment.

749
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:52,760
Speaker 1: But look again, it's go back to what you said earlier.

750
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:54,799
Speaker 1: We call them extreme of files. But of course, if

751
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:58,120
Speaker 1: that were the only place life could exist on a world,

752
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 1: would they really be extreme of aisles. It kind of

753
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:03,839
Speaker 1: depends on how you know where you're approaching it from it. Yeah,

754
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: that's what they're adapted to. Yeah, I mean, try to

755
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: put them in a in a lush farm land on

756
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: Earth and then you would die out. That would be

757
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:12,759
Speaker 1: their extreme environment. Yeah. So there's a lot of a

758
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: lot of hope, a lot of excitement, uh, specifically for

759
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:20,480
Speaker 1: Europa because a number of the factors UH in the

760
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 1: or in the emergence of life seemed to exist there. Yeah,

761
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:27,400
Speaker 1: and because of that, Europa is a prime target for

762
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: future exploration and research. So we've mentioned Juice. Juice wants

763
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,320
Speaker 1: to go to Europa, of course, but what else is

764
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:38,719
Speaker 1: going to Europa? Well, NASA is currently putting together the

765
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: Europa Multiple fly By mission for the same time period.

766
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 1: That mission is scheduled launch in arriving at the Jovian

767
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:50,840
Speaker 1: System in two seems to be a big year in general.

768
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:53,880
Speaker 1: According to a BBC report from actually earlier this month,

769
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: NASA is eyeing that year as a potential launch date

770
00:44:57,200 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 1: for a soft landing mission to Europa. All so es

771
00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 1: A scientists are currently considering these five different concepts um

772
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: for their own explorations So one is a remote sensing

773
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: instrument that would go aboard that that American two probe.

774
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: Another is a small free flying satellite that would detach

775
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 1: from this probe. Another is a small satellite that would

776
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 1: detach from the lander's mother ship. Another is one or

777
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 1: two instrumented projectiles that would drop from the mother ship projectiles. Yeah,

778
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll get to to the projectile aspect here

779
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 1: in a second. Also an instrument to ride on the

780
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 1: soft lander and uh quote unquote do science at the surface. Um.

781
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:42,680
Speaker 1: I love it when landers do science. Yeah, I mean

782
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:44,320
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it's you know that

783
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 1: we're in the early enough stages for figuring out exactly

784
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: what it would do, but then we also know a

785
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 1: number of the science that it would do. But then

786
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:57,319
Speaker 1: the one that really is fascinating is the idea of

787
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:01,400
Speaker 1: a penetrator hard Lander. So this would a steel missile

788
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: loaded with sensors that strikes at three hundred miles per

789
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 1: second and collects data on the interior. So we're talking

790
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: some very rugged instruments. They've apparently tested this out a

791
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: little bit on Earth, uh and found that, yes, that

792
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 1: the instruments do survive such an impact. Well, that's one

793
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 1: of the interesting questions is what we would do to

794
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: get to that subsurface ocean, because so you'd have to

795
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 1: if you land on the surface of Europa, if you

796
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:30,759
Speaker 1: imagine it has an extremely thick ice crust and the

797
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 1: subsurface ocean is underneath that, you'd have to drill down

798
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: or melt down to get to it. And then once

799
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: you're down there, how do you get the data back

800
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: up to the surface. Right, And and we don't want

801
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: to discount just the journey to any of these moons

802
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: in general, because this is not like the friendliest neighborhood

803
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: to enter into your kind of entering. As we mentioned,

804
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: you're kind of going into a sub solar system with

805
00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 1: plenty of objects singing around with rings, etcetera. So it's, uh,

806
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 1: there are a number of factors that there are a

807
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 1: number of hurdles to even getting to your destination. Now, Robert,

808
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: have you seen the science fiction movie Europa Report. I

809
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: have not. I really liked Europa Report. I I would

810
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: be interested in hearing what you guys out there think,

811
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: our listeners. Have you seen this movie? I thought it

812
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:19,440
Speaker 1: was cool and that it was a modest science fiction

813
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: movie that did it did a lot with a little

814
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: and one thing I really liked about it is that

815
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 1: it was truly a science fiction movie about the exploration

816
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: of Europa and science fiction, I mean, um, a lot

817
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:35,080
Speaker 1: of movies that are called science fiction are really just

818
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: sort of action fantasy where the instead of having magical weapons,

819
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,959
Speaker 1: you have technological weapons, but they're still basically the same

820
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:46,320
Speaker 1: the viewer that has no idea what it's just. Instead

821
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: of having a religious or supernatural explanation for the magic,

822
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:53,719
Speaker 1: it is a vaguely science explanation for them magic. Yeah, exactly.

823
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 1: And this movie was not like that. I mean that

824
00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: it was a science fiction movie in that the plot

825
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 1: was inherently about science. It had a it has scientific

826
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: plot and the scientific thrust, and the characters had a

827
00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 1: scientific mission that was actually grounded in real things we'd

828
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:10,920
Speaker 1: want to learn in the real ways we'd go about

829
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: trying to learn them. Uh. And so I won't I

830
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:16,600
Speaker 1: will try not spoil anything about the movie, but they

831
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,080
Speaker 1: it's a movie about a manned mission, or I should

832
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 1: say a crude mission, a mission with a crew going

833
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: to the surface of Europa and trying to figure out

834
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: if there's life in the oceans underneath and so I

835
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:32,600
Speaker 1: give it a thumbs up. Does hilarityst No, not really

836
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:38,200
Speaker 1: hilarity maybe some I, without spoiling too much, I will

837
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:41,400
Speaker 1: say that things don't go exactly to plan. Did it

838
00:48:41,400 --> 00:48:50,759
Speaker 1: wouldn't be much of a movie, all right. Well, at

839
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:56,839
Speaker 1: this point, let us sadly leave Europa with its mysteries unsolved,

840
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 1: and continue on to the innermost of the Galilean moons. Yes,

841
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 1: now does time. We're approaching Io. It's spelled two letters io,

842
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:12,319
Speaker 1: and that seems to make sense. But because there's a

843
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 1: kind of grinding simplicity and beauty and weirdness to this planet,

844
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 1: it's it's it's maybe the strangest and most gorgeous of

845
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: all of them, and of all of them it most

846
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:31,080
Speaker 1: wants to kill you. So IOW is Jupiter's innermost Galileean moon.

847
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: In terms of diameter, it is slightly, but only slightly

848
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 1: larger than Earth's moon. It's almost comparable in size, and

849
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: its orbit keeps it within four hundred and two kilometers

850
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:47,799
Speaker 1: or two hundred sixty two thous miles of Jupiter. That's

851
00:49:47,840 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: not not a whole lot farther than the distance between

852
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:54,239
Speaker 1: the Earth and its moon, except think about how big

853
00:49:54,320 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: Jupiter is yeah. Yeah, so what's yeah, So what's like

854
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 1: on the surface of Io. It's freezing hell and burning

855
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 1: hell at the same time, where the ground that you

856
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:10,799
Speaker 1: walk on churns up and down like a tsunami as

857
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: the tides go in and out. On the solid world.

858
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 1: Io is a world of extremes. It's uh. It's the

859
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:21,719
Speaker 1: most geologically active object in the Solar System, the whole

860
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:25,320
Speaker 1: Solar System, including Earth, with more than four hundred active

861
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: volcanoes that we know about some eruptions. These volcanoes shoot

862
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: ejective plumes of three hundred kilometers or a hundred and

863
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 1: eighty six miles out into space above the surface. If

864
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 1: you see some images of these, it's incredible. It looks

865
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 1: like it looks like there's something else going on behind

866
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:45,799
Speaker 1: Io that's being obscured by the planet. But no, you

867
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 1: that's not what it is. You're just seeing in profile

868
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 1: plumes of planet sized proportions exploding off of the surface.

869
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 1: And uh. And so the average temperature on the surface

870
00:50:58,040 --> 00:51:01,720
Speaker 1: is negative two hundred and two degrees fahrenheit or negative

871
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:05,280
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty degrees celsius, which is far colder

872
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: than the coldest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth, that is,

873
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 1: unless you're standing near one of Io's hundreds of volcanoes

874
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:16,600
Speaker 1: while it's erupting, and here the temperatures are more like

875
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:20,960
Speaker 1: three thousand degrees fahrenheit or D one thousand sixty nine

876
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. There is an atmosphere, but it's thin and

877
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: mostly made of the toxic gas sulfur dioxide, which is

878
00:51:30,120 --> 00:51:33,319
Speaker 1: often associated with volcanic activity even on Earth. So if

879
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: you know, you get killed by toxic fumes near a

880
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: volcano or something like that, you may be breathing sulfur dioxide.

881
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:44,359
Speaker 1: And speaking of sulfur compounds, the planet is also going

882
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:49,120
Speaker 1: to be covered probably in fields of yellow snow. You

883
00:51:49,160 --> 00:51:51,399
Speaker 1: don't eat the yellow snow in this case, and it's

884
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 1: because it's sulfur dioxide snow. So the planet it has

885
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 1: these eruptions where these particles of sulfur dioxide gas come

886
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:02,360
Speaker 1: out and go all around the planet. But then because

887
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:05,040
Speaker 1: it's so cold, they tend to crystallize and fall down

888
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:09,880
Speaker 1: as the sulfur dioxide yellow snow. Uh, So it's just

889
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 1: covered in these poisonous golden snow fields. But other than that,

890
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:17,040
Speaker 1: it's a good place to visit. No, no, it's also

891
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:22,319
Speaker 1: a blasted heath of radiation. So uh, it's the closest

892
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:26,680
Speaker 1: to Jupiter and the most exposed to Jupiter's radiation. And

893
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:31,799
Speaker 1: then there's also because Io is connected to Jupiter through

894
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:36,240
Speaker 1: a sort of magnetic ring that comes out of Jupiter's magnetosphere,

895
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:40,600
Speaker 1: it also creates what's called a plasma torus, which is

896
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:45,360
Speaker 1: just this ring of killer charged particles flowing off of

897
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 1: Io and into Jupiter. Uh. And it's it's kind of unbelievable.

898
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:52,320
Speaker 1: You you wouldn't want to get near it, you wouldn't

899
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:53,960
Speaker 1: want to stand in it. You really don't even want

900
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 1: to fly a probe through it. And I mentioned earlier

901
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:02,960
Speaker 1: the tidal heaving on Io. So on Io, there there

902
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 1: are tides, but there are no oceans. It doesn't have

903
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:10,320
Speaker 1: water to have tides. It has tides in the ground itself.

904
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:13,520
Speaker 1: Now other planets well too, tides of course, you know,

905
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 1: being influenced by the gravity of surrounding bodies. There's there's

906
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: tidal action acting on Io from Jupiter and from the

907
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: other moons that are going around Jupiter. But these incredibly

908
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:28,320
Speaker 1: powerful gravitational forces, instead of moving water around on the surface,

909
00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:33,839
Speaker 1: end up moving the ground up and down hundreds of feet. Now,

910
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 1: from what I understand, I think you wouldn't feel this

911
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,760
Speaker 1: like you know, waves coming up and down really fast

912
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,440
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But it does. This tidle flexing

913
00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,839
Speaker 1: and stretching of the solid mass of the planet does

914
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:48,840
Speaker 1: lead to incredible friction. I mean, think what would happen

915
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:52,359
Speaker 1: if you were constantly flexing a rock in and out

916
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:55,279
Speaker 1: to get pretty hot, And this is what happens to

917
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,760
Speaker 1: the interior of Io, leading it to be this burning

918
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:03,399
Speaker 1: hellscape within the freezing hellscape. Another crazy fact about Io

919
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:08,480
Speaker 1: Jupiter is going to loom huge in the sky. The

920
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:11,719
Speaker 1: NASA JPL website has a really interesting app that I

921
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 1: recommend you try to use it. It's the Solar System Simulator,

922
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,440
Speaker 1: which lets you simulate looking at one object in the

923
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: Solar System from another object in the Solar System at

924
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 1: any given time. Uh. And I tried this out. I

925
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, what does it look like looking at

926
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,279
Speaker 1: Jupiter from Io right now? And from the surface of

927
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:33,239
Speaker 1: Io right now? Jupiter currently takes about it takes up

928
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:37,719
Speaker 1: about nineteen point five degrees in the sky, so you know,

929
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:40,959
Speaker 1: imagine the degrees from horizon to horizon you've got about

930
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty degrees. Uh this so this is

931
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:46,920
Speaker 1: about twenty degrees. That's like one ninth of the width

932
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 1: of the sky. It's crazy to imagine that. I mean,

933
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:53,040
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy to imagine even of course, standing on

934
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:56,000
Speaker 1: the surface of Io and you're I guess godlikes space

935
00:54:56,040 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: suit that somehow protects you from all of these extreme conditions. Somehow,

936
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: I think we're not ever going to be walking on

937
00:55:02,680 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 1: I yeah, I mean you would have to be dealing

938
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: with like a what like a level level one or

939
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:15,279
Speaker 1: level two civilization just kardashi yea Cardachan level, like some

940
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:19,440
Speaker 1: sort of like crazy sci fi field system like where

941
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:21,399
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even be a physical suit as much as

942
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:24,719
Speaker 1: like a crazy energy shield that is somehow protecting you

943
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 1: unless you're Sean Connery with a shotgun. Right. Oh? Yes, Um,

944
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: is it too early to mention Outland? No, it's not so.

945
00:55:31,600 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: Before we recorded the episode, we were talking about how

946
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:38,240
Speaker 1: Robert just rediscovered that the movie Outland, the starring Sean Connery,

947
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:40,799
Speaker 1: which is essentially high Noon in space. Yeah, it's a

948
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 1: space western, Uh, nice and gritty. It's it feels like

949
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 1: you could take place in the same universe as Alien US,

950
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:51,239
Speaker 1: you know, a lesser film, but it has that kind

951
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:55,799
Speaker 1: of grimy uh you know Workman's vision of life in

952
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:59,799
Speaker 1: the solar the opposite of Flash Gordon. But it takes

953
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:02,839
Speaker 1: place us on Io right again, How realistic is that?

954
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 1: Seems not very Yeah, it's been a while since I've

955
00:56:05,200 --> 00:56:08,239
Speaker 1: seen it, but I do not recall the I do

956
00:56:08,320 --> 00:56:10,799
Speaker 1: not recall any highly volcanic scenes. I could be wrong

957
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:13,879
Speaker 1: on that. I felt feel like they delivered like a

958
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: cold or vision of Io. Yeah, but it's it's a

959
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:22,200
Speaker 1: great film, very violent, a very very gritty space drugs,

960
00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:26,239
Speaker 1: space prostitutes, Sean Connie with a shotgun, Peter Boyle and

961
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:28,680
Speaker 1: some other actors that would go on to to make

962
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: a name for themselves, and then the cast as well.

963
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,760
Speaker 1: Is it kind of like Leviathan in Space? Not really,

964
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 1: there's no monster. It's like it's a very human story.

965
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:40,320
Speaker 1: It's it's essentially you know, it's it's a mining town

966
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: Western scenario. But on this Jovian, I guess I was

967
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:48,759
Speaker 1: just going with the mining outpost aspect of Leviathan. Um,

968
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 1: do we need to talk about Leviathan on this podcast?

969
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 1: We can carry on. Sorry, I've seen that one more recently. Yeah,

970
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,360
Speaker 1: well it does have a great poster. It does fabulous poster. Okay,

971
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 1: So back to Io. Given everything we've said so far

972
00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: freezing hell and burning hell, uh, sulfur dioxide, vicious radiation bath,

973
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:12,600
Speaker 1: we shouldn't expect this place to have any life at all, right,

974
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:16,160
Speaker 1: it seems a ridiculous proposition. Also, no liquid water on

975
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:20,120
Speaker 1: the surface. It sounds like the last place. No organic

976
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 1: molecules ever detected there, I mean, why ferocious radiation, so

977
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,360
Speaker 1: we can definitely rule out the possibility right, Well, actually

978
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:32,800
Speaker 1: not according to everyone. And I wonder if this is

979
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: just an expert uh an astrobiologists trying to emphasize what

980
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:41,400
Speaker 1: possibilities are out there, more thought experiment than anything it

981
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 1: could be. But from two thousand ten, I found an

982
00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:46,360
Speaker 1: article by Charles Q. Choi that speaks to Dr Dirk

983
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 1: Schultz may COOCHU an astro biole an astrobiologist at Washington

984
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 1: State University, and UH. Dr Schultz may Cooch said, quote,

985
00:57:56,240 --> 00:57:58,920
Speaker 1: life on the surface is all but impossible, but if

986
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:02,320
Speaker 1: you go down further into the rocks, it could be intriguing.

987
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,240
Speaker 1: We shouldn't categorize it as dead, right, away just because

988
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:10,240
Speaker 1: it's so extreme. So, based on this guy's comments, this

989
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 1: astrobiologist comments, the article went on to sort of explore

990
00:58:14,200 --> 00:58:16,800
Speaker 1: what life could be like on Io. You know, if

991
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 1: we if we look at Europa and Ganymede, which have

992
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 1: water ice, we can get a picture closer to what

993
00:58:22,080 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: Io might have looked like billions of years ago, closer

994
00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:28,880
Speaker 1: to the time of its formation. Radiation from Jupiter probably

995
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:31,800
Speaker 1: would have ripped away Io's water within about ten million

996
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:35,400
Speaker 1: years or so, but life that evolved on the surface

997
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:39,640
Speaker 1: during that period could possibly have retreated underground, surviving in

998
00:58:39,760 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 1: subterranean lava tubes, which could contain moisture and protect the

999
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:48,640
Speaker 1: microbial life forms from radiation that's on Io's surface. What

1000
00:58:48,640 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: what is impossible up above may not be impossible below.

1001
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: And as we've pointed out before, they're extreme a file

1002
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 1: organisms on Earth that can survive and thrive in lava

1003
00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 1: tubes and even near active geotherm hotspots like Geyser's. So

1004
00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:05,560
Speaker 1: Schultz make Coach comments that the ultimate chances of finding

1005
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:08,600
Speaker 1: life on Io seem pretty low, but we shouldn't rule

1006
00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: it out. And besides, how amazing would that be to

1007
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:15,720
Speaker 1: find life on this sulfurous golden hell. It would really

1008
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 1: change your idea of what's possible for self replicating organisms

1009
00:59:19,240 --> 00:59:21,800
Speaker 1: in the universe, I think indeed, you know, and it

1010
00:59:21,880 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 1: also makes me wander you know, we've we've been discussing

1011
00:59:25,200 --> 00:59:27,600
Speaker 1: some sci fi a little bit here, but you're always

1012
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 1: encountering that idea of of of either a human or

1013
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:35,000
Speaker 1: other intelligence civilization seating life in other worlds. And generally

1014
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:38,280
Speaker 1: that doesn't take the forum of extreme of files. But

1015
00:59:38,520 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: but I wonder, like, what could we one day reach

1016
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: the point where a human or human derived civilization would

1017
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:49,560
Speaker 1: reach a world like like Io. Look at it determined

1018
00:59:49,560 --> 00:59:51,920
Speaker 1: that there's no even there's no life, even extreme a

1019
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:55,360
Speaker 1: file life. But then custom makes something to survive, and

1020
00:59:55,400 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: it's like it's in its most tolerable, um A location.

1021
01:00:02,040 --> 01:00:04,280
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's fun to think about. Yeah, well there,

1022
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:06,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you get into, of course, the

1023
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:10,000
Speaker 1: the ethics questions about seeding life. You know, you'd have

1024
01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 1: to be sure if that's even possible that there was

1025
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:18,040
Speaker 1: no life there now and that life wasn't you know,

1026
01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: in store for it at some point in the future.

1027
01:00:20,840 --> 01:00:23,919
Speaker 1: Um So, who's to say? But then again, I think

1028
01:00:23,960 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 1: that's kind of weird, like I feel this ethical intuition

1029
01:00:26,440 --> 01:00:30,280
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't go about, you know, contaminating other worlds

1030
01:00:30,320 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 1: with possible life that could extinguish the life that exists

1031
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:35,800
Speaker 1: there now. But then again, I really don't feel bad

1032
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 1: about using alcohol to kill bacteria. If you're washing your

1033
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:43,560
Speaker 1: hands before surgery or something like that, you know, it's

1034
01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:46,080
Speaker 1: I don't know, well, you know that bacteria was never

1035
01:00:46,160 --> 01:00:48,000
Speaker 1: going to make it to Aisle anyway, so it's fine.

1036
01:00:48,160 --> 01:00:51,640
Speaker 1: I guess so alien bacteria just has so many more

1037
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:56,479
Speaker 1: rights than Earth bacteria. Okay, So future missions to Io

1038
01:00:57,560 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 1: one would be the Io volcano observed over one proposed

1039
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,280
Speaker 1: future mission at least we don't know, but uh, the

1040
01:01:04,320 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 1: proposed future mission to Io would be this observer, primarily

1041
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:10,920
Speaker 1: the work of the planetary geologist Alfred McEwan, And this

1042
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:13,200
Speaker 1: would be a probe that goes into orbit around Jupiter

1043
01:01:13,320 --> 01:01:15,440
Speaker 1: and observes Io close up over the course of at

1044
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: least nine flyby's over two years. And this would be

1045
01:01:18,720 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 1: studying Io's temperature, it's a volcanic activity and its surface composition.

1046
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 1: And if the proposed mission is accepted, it's going to

1047
01:01:25,680 --> 01:01:28,360
Speaker 1: launch by around one So it seems like in the

1048
01:01:28,360 --> 01:01:31,880
Speaker 1: early twenties, there's going to be a lot of potential

1049
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:35,200
Speaker 1: Jupiter missions launching. That has got to be a I mean,

1050
01:01:35,240 --> 01:01:38,880
Speaker 1: we've already discussed the volcanic eruptions that blast out into

1051
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:41,560
Speaker 1: into space off of Io, so that would see, it

1052
01:01:41,560 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: would seem like it would be a difficult orbit to maintain,

1053
01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 1: and maybe that's part of the gamble, like how well

1054
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the question would be exactly how

1055
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:49,920
Speaker 1: close is it getting to Io if it's gonna be

1056
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:52,760
Speaker 1: orbiting Jupiter. Uh. I think I read something like that

1057
01:01:52,840 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 1: the closest point it would ever get to Io would

1058
01:01:55,840 --> 01:01:59,320
Speaker 1: be around two hundred kilometers away, which is I mean,

1059
01:01:59,320 --> 01:02:03,480
Speaker 1: that's pretty past. But the bigger question, I think, much

1060
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 1: more than the geologic activity, is just the radiation. I mean,

1061
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 1: even even non organic just our instruments at that point

1062
01:02:11,200 --> 01:02:14,080
Speaker 1: are can be subject to extreme radiation and so it

1063
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:16,920
Speaker 1: would have to be a hardy kind of probe to survive.

1064
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:20,680
Speaker 1: If anything were to actually land on Io, it would

1065
01:02:20,720 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 1: have to be a flying fallout shelter. As we've mentioned,

1066
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:26,680
Speaker 1: the radiations fierce, and it has damaged instruments on probes

1067
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:28,919
Speaker 1: in the past, right, Yes, I mean that's how that's

1068
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 1: how potent the radiation of IO is. One last thing

1069
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:36,080
Speaker 1: I wanted to add about IO coming from the angle

1070
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:43,400
Speaker 1: of exo theology. Uh, the religion space religion. Oh, this

1071
01:02:43,440 --> 01:02:45,720
Speaker 1: is a this is a topic I love. Yeah, of

1072
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:48,439
Speaker 1: course I love it too. And uh, we should add

1073
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:50,720
Speaker 1: that we keep using the Hell analogy for I just

1074
01:02:50,840 --> 01:02:53,240
Speaker 1: merely for descriptive reasons, to give you an image to

1075
01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:55,440
Speaker 1: map it onto in your brain. But there's actually at

1076
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:59,560
Speaker 1: least one theologian who exists who believes Hell can be

1077
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:03,400
Speaker 1: found in the Solar system. Uh. He is a guy

1078
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:07,360
Speaker 1: named Michael sin teeny and he's a reverend who he

1079
01:03:07,440 --> 01:03:11,680
Speaker 1: self published a book that argues that the Christian Hell

1080
01:03:11,800 --> 01:03:15,360
Speaker 1: is literally to be found on the planet Venus. And

1081
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:18,280
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people he's managed to convince

1082
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 1: of this. This is obviously not a standard Christian belief.

1083
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:25,560
Speaker 1: This is his idea. Um, but I wonder why not

1084
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:29,439
Speaker 1: Io instead? I know, seems like an even better candidate. Yeah,

1085
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:32,400
Speaker 1: I mean, you have it. Fl It flows perfectly with

1086
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:36,000
Speaker 1: Dante's vision, right because you have both the hot region,

1087
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:40,000
Speaker 1: the hot regions, the cold regions. It's it's perfect. All

1088
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:42,560
Speaker 1: you need is Satan there after his waist. And yeah,

1089
01:03:42,640 --> 01:03:45,320
Speaker 1: and it matches with our journey of descent, right as

1090
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:48,400
Speaker 1: we've gone closer and closer into the planet. Which reminds me,

1091
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:51,960
Speaker 1: now that we've reached the end of our journey, we're

1092
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 1: getting very close to Jupiter itself. Yeah, and our our

1093
01:03:55,840 --> 01:04:00,520
Speaker 1: little terrarium capsule is withering a little bit. It was

1094
01:04:00,680 --> 01:04:05,240
Speaker 1: standing the inner radiation of the Jovian System. I wonder

1095
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:08,320
Speaker 1: what's going to happen as we descend into the gas.

1096
01:04:08,520 --> 01:04:11,960
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're descending into a into a massive

1097
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:17,600
Speaker 1: gas world of storms and poison and uh and eventually

1098
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: a Rocky core. Uh. With the pressure and the it's

1099
01:04:22,040 --> 01:04:25,320
Speaker 1: just insane. I'm pretty sure we'll be obliterated before we

1100
01:04:25,320 --> 01:04:29,360
Speaker 1: reach the Rocky Cory. Oh yes, yes, certainly. I doubt

1101
01:04:29,360 --> 01:04:32,160
Speaker 1: we'll love to reach the Rocky Corps. But maybe there

1102
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: is no Rocky Core. Maybe the Rocky Core is all

1103
01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 1: in your mind. Well, the important thing is that we

1104
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: made it this far. I mean, we were ordered to

1105
01:04:38,720 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: jettison the dome a while back. We held on this long.

1106
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:44,440
Speaker 1: Everything got to survive there just a little bit longer,

1107
01:04:44,640 --> 01:04:46,680
Speaker 1: so we can we can play one last game of

1108
01:04:47,400 --> 01:04:51,240
Speaker 1: checkers or cards with the robots and just go out

1109
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:53,320
Speaker 1: on a high note. Well. One thing I should have

1110
01:04:53,400 --> 01:04:55,760
Speaker 1: mentioned you as we were going, but I didn't because

1111
01:04:55,800 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: I was afraid was that at each moon we passed

1112
01:04:58,560 --> 01:05:01,480
Speaker 1: along the way, I jettisoned all a capsule of Earth life,

1113
01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:06,200
Speaker 1: unethically seating these planets and potentially contaminating them for all

1114
01:05:06,240 --> 01:05:10,760
Speaker 1: future research. But maybe these little life forms will take hold. Yeah. Well, hey,

1115
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:15,439
Speaker 1: that's better than nothing, right, So let's hope something takes root,

1116
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:20,080
Speaker 1: all right. So there you have it, an exploration of

1117
01:05:20,160 --> 01:05:24,560
Speaker 1: the Galilean moons, just the four greatest of the Jovian

1118
01:05:24,600 --> 01:05:28,440
Speaker 1: moons in general, but each one a fascinating world. And

1119
01:05:28,640 --> 01:05:32,400
Speaker 1: uh and the cool thing too, is that even over

1120
01:05:32,400 --> 01:05:34,800
Speaker 1: the course of the next year or so, we're hopefully

1121
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:37,960
Speaker 1: going to learn more and more about these these places. Yeah,

1122
01:05:38,040 --> 01:05:39,800
Speaker 1: so we want to thank you for joining us on

1123
01:05:39,840 --> 01:05:42,640
Speaker 1: our journey through this solar system. Within a solar system,

1124
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:48,720
Speaker 1: the the gas Giant and it's wonderful sphere of influence. Indeed,

1125
01:05:48,760 --> 01:05:50,680
Speaker 1: and if you want to see images of some of

1126
01:05:50,720 --> 01:05:54,240
Speaker 1: these moons as well as explore some links out to

1127
01:05:54,360 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 1: additional data about them, be sure to check out the

1128
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. At stuff to blow your

1129
01:05:59,160 --> 01:06:01,680
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we will

1130
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:04,800
Speaker 1: find all the podcast episodes. You'll find blog posts, you'll

1131
01:06:04,840 --> 01:06:08,880
Speaker 1: find galleries, lists, videos, links out to our social media

1132
01:06:08,880 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 1: accounts such as Facebook and Twitter, where blow the Mind

1133
01:06:11,600 --> 01:06:15,640
Speaker 1: on both of those. We also have Tumbler and Instagram accounts.

1134
01:06:15,720 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: If that is your jam, and if you want to

1135
01:06:17,680 --> 01:06:19,680
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with your favorite fact about

1136
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:22,120
Speaker 1: Jupiter or its moons, or you want to let us

1137
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:24,160
Speaker 1: know what you think the most interesting object in the

1138
01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 1: Solar System is, or where you think we're most likely

1139
01:06:27,480 --> 01:06:30,120
Speaker 1: to find the life outside of Earth, you can email

1140
01:06:30,200 --> 01:06:42,320
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.

1141
01:06:42,400 --> 01:06:44,840
Speaker 1: Well more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

1142
01:06:44,840 --> 01:07:03,360
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com blasted three per prop

1143
01:07:05,160 --> 01:07:05,440
Speaker 1: first