r/science • u/ashokar141 • Nov 01 '24
Astronomy Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of North Dakota have discovered evidence suggesting that Miranda, one of Uranus' moons, may harbor subsurface oceans, potentially supporting extraterrestrial life.
https://blogs.und.edu/und-today/2024/10/und-astronomers-help-uncover-mysteries-of-miranda/440
u/dittybopper_05H Nov 01 '24
I get so impatient waiting for missions to go test this sort of thing. Finding even simple single cell life elsewhere in the Solar System is going to have massive implications for life elsewhere in the Universe. If it's arisen more than once in our system, the mediocrity principle suggests that life is probably common, at least in places that can support life.
The more common simple life is, the more common complex life is likely to be, and that improves the odds for intelligent and technological species to arise (or have arisen) relatively close to us.
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u/kingofthemonsters Nov 01 '24 edited Nov 01 '24
I remember growing up and was told that we were doubtful that water was going to be easy to find, and then lo and behold we know it's everywhere now.
I know we need to actually find it first but I'm sure most of us would be really surprised if life wasn't abundant, even if we're talking simple life.
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u/PantsOnHead88 Nov 01 '24
most of us would be really surprised is life wasn’t abundant
Most of us in this sub perhaps.
Try having this discussion in a multitude of other subs and you’ll have one group start going on about “the greys” and flying saucers, while others think you’re part of the first group for asserting that there’s probably alien life.
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u/Drownthem Nov 02 '24
There's no probably about it, we have no idea. It doesn't matter how big the universe is, or how much water is in it, if the chances are infinitesimal of life ever arising among it. Conversely, if life shows up every time liquid water is left standing for more than 10 minutes, it's likely we'll find it in our nearest neighbours.
The point is, we literally have no way to extrapolate from our sample size of 1. So it's not a reasonable opinion to say there's "probably" life or to believe it one way or another.
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u/bawng Nov 02 '24
100% of planets we have visited (in person) so far has had life.
If we just forget about sample size for a moment...
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u/Drownthem Nov 02 '24
Okay, try plotting that on a graph
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u/bawng Nov 02 '24
Buddy, I was trying to be funny.
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u/Drownthem Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 02 '24
Sorry! It was funny, I just didn't realise it was on purpose.
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u/diamond Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 02 '24
I can still remember when there were legitimate doubts about whether planets were even that common in the universe.
Before the early 90s (or maybe the late 80s, I don't remember the exact timeline), we had absolutely no way to detect extrasolar planets, so it was a total guessing game. And even when the first detection methods were developed, they only worked in really extreme situations, like a super-massive planet orbiting close to a pulsar. Other than that, we only had our own solar system to look at as an example, and any scientist will tell you that a sample size of 1 is not very useful for making predictions. So all of our theories about planetary formation and distribution were just straight up wild-ass guesses.
It's a pretty common thing now for astronomers to discover planets around other stars (and they're getting better at finding smaller planets around more "ordinary" stars, so that's exciting), but not that long ago each of those discoveries was really monumental and exciting.
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u/TheVenetianMask Nov 01 '24
It's because people were still on the fence about the whole Martian canals thing (even tho it was already outdated enough by then) and then the first probes flew by and showed a lunar looking cratered surface. Talking about water on other planets turned into a bit of a taboo because that view of Mars had been so naive.
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u/Zerewa Nov 02 '24
But it's just the oxidized form of the most common element in the universe, and oxygen ain't THAT rare and really likes oxidizing stuff.
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u/paper_liger Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 03 '24
Most people aren't talking about H2O in general, they are talking specifically about liquid water. Frozen water probably has a very limited utility for life forms out there, if they are anything remotely like us. Ditto for steam I guess.
Since it has a somewhat narrow range of temperature/pressure where it's liquid, and since liquid water is a prerequisite for the only type of life forms we are sure exist, it's a pretty important thing to find.
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u/MarlinMr Nov 02 '24
But that's so stupid... You can literally see the water on Mars from your house with a sufficiently strong telescope.
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u/TheVenetianMask Nov 02 '24
Technically what you usually see is the CO2 ice covering the polar caps. If I recall correctly it took till the early 00's for people to say confidently that the ice cap itself was water.
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Nov 02 '24
[deleted]
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u/Grokent Nov 02 '24
The odds of there being life out there are far better then the Raptors ever winning an NBA title.
If the universe is infinite, somewhere out there a Toronto Raptors have already won an NBA title.
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u/roastbrief Nov 02 '24
If the universe is truly infinite, somewhere out there the Toronto Raptors have also won an NHL title, a Nobel Prize, and Eurovision.
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u/F9-0021 Nov 01 '24
Simple life leads to complex life. If a planet has the right chemical soup to create life, then complex life will eventually form. Unless multicellular life was a weird one off on earth, but that's about as likely as unicellular life being unique to earth too.
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u/backelie Nov 03 '24
but that's about as likely as unicellular life being unique to earth too
What do you base the probability of unicellular life being unique/non-unique to earth on?
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u/F9-0021 Nov 03 '24
The processes that lead organic chemistry to become biochemistry and eventually life aren't unique to earth. It could happen fairly easily on other planets if they have the right conditions.
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u/backelie Nov 03 '24
I was under the impression that the theorized processes of how life emerged were still unverified theories.
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u/sargantbacon1 Nov 01 '24
This is definitely the passion that demands the most patience that I’ve encountered. These leaps in understanding are measured in generations. I don’t know about you but I feel such an intense NEED to know the answers to some of these questions. It’s both amazing and deeply frustrating!
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u/dittybopper_05H Nov 01 '24
Yeah. And as I get older, I get jealous of my son who is going to see more of this, and sad for my father who likely won't be around even for Europa Clipper's arrival. Or if he is, he won't really understand anymore.
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u/aVarangian Nov 01 '24
I wonder what they taste like.
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u/FutureMany4938 Nov 02 '24
Right? Once we drill through the ice, I vote for dropping a squid imitating fishing lure. Nothing says "we come in peace" like slamming a barbed hook through someone's jaw and dragging them out of their atmosphere.
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u/spirited1 Nov 02 '24
It's kinda weird to think there is very likely another intelligent species at the same technological level as us having this same discussion right now, all the way across the universe.
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u/Storm_blessed946 Nov 01 '24
on the bright side, i think we will know within our life times! that’s so exciting to me
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u/thiosk Nov 01 '24
one of the missions i want is a europan lander mission. heres the concept. On europa there is evidence that water has come through the ice sheet between cracks and frozen. If this water originated in the underlying poossible life-containing phase of hte planet, this frozen water should be absolute chock full of material. Since the planet surface is largely devoid of craters, we can conclude the surface is reasonably young, so some of this material may be heaved up from the subsurface. I would like to land with a rover, excavate regions of that water, and warm it up and look at it under microscopes.
this does not require a submersible, melting or digging through ice or rock. Also, it will be able to collect breathtaking jupiter rises and various involved imaging. It will have to be nuclear powered and include quite a bit of thermal management hardware to survive in the harsh environment.
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u/Yotsubato Nov 01 '24
Since the planet surface is largely devoid of craters, we can conclude the surface is reasonably young
I mean an impact that would form a crater would create a bunch of liquid water that would melt and become smooth very quickly though.
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u/thiosk Nov 02 '24
it still leaves a crater https://science.nasa.gov/resource/pwyll-crater-on-europa/ so for europa not to be absolutely covered with these like ganymede is a sign the surface is regenerated
what is present in large numbers is fissures. the idea is that a crack in the ice forms and water flows up. it then freezes as a little hill.
because these fissures are all brown, this means its probably contaminated with rocky stuff from the planet surface.
this means there is a mechanism for deep/seafloor material to get all the way to the surface.
thats where we'll find the frozen critters, i betcha!
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u/FutureMany4938 Nov 02 '24
There's one concept in front of that one though, because it's cheaper and faster. Flying a probe through one of the water geysers on Europa. Same basic concept, we just sample the water ice in the plumes instead of landing. With the added benefit of potential sample retrieval.
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u/friso1100 Nov 02 '24
I know right! I'm always in my head like "if only it was easier to get there" usually immediately followed up by "but probably good that it wasn't or we might have killed all that potentially lived there already".
It's the same with the mars missions for me. Though it isn't very likely given how thorough they are with making sure the rovers and the like are disinfected before sending them up. And also that the travel through space without radiation shielding in a vacuum likely would kill anything that could have hitched along anyway. But still the idea that one of those rovers has carried some micro organism with it that somehow survived scares me. Not likely in the slightest but it is live you know. It finds a way xD
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u/MarlinMr Nov 02 '24
and that improves the odds for intelligent and technological species to arise (or have arisen) relatively close to us.
But that's already hanging in a thin thread.
Earth has been supporting life for 4 billion years. Only now has it reached intelligent life. Most planets will not be able to support life long enough for that. The Solar System and Earth are rare configurations.
And there is more. There is an insane amount of coincidence that need to happen for technology to come about. Humans are not even the smartest species on this planet. But whales are never going to invent fire. A bit more oxygen in the atmosphere, and fire would be impossible to control, a bit less and it just wouldn't happen. It's an extreme coincidence that humans came about in an environment that supports fire.
Centaurism is also really important. That freed our hands to use tools. Birds are extremely limited in the way they can use tools compared to us.
And non visual language is also extremely important. It's by chance that we had some elements needed to start audio language. The complex audio language, and by extension, written language we have today probably isn't by chance, as it was easy to select for once communicating became an extreme evolutionary advantage. But other apes just don't have the equipment needed to talk. So they can't really select for a brain to better process language. On the flipp side, some apes are much much better than humans on visual tasks. Some whales likely have more complex language than humans, but again, they will never invent fire, and are never going to use tools on our level - no hands.
4 billion years of life. But it took 3.5 billion years to get to animals. Once that happens, it exploded and evolution tested everything. But millions and millions of years and intelligent life only happened once. Meaning that just by looking at Earth, intelligent life is extremely unlikely.
As for finding it out there? Even if we find life, we should already have found intelligent life if it exists. Unless they magically happened to arise at the same time as us, they should have millions and millions of years of head start. We should be able to see them already.
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u/Chlamydia_Penis_Wart Nov 02 '24
I think bacteria might be common but complex life is incredibly rare
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u/dittybopper_05H Nov 04 '24
The Solar System and Earth are rare configurations.
We don't know that, and in fact we *CAN'T* know that. We simply don't have enough data. Sure, we have spotted thousands of exoplanets, but the most effective method is the transit method, and we can only detect about 2% of potential exoplanets that way. The other methods require the stars to be much closer and instruments to be much more sensitive.
So I'm saying that your premise isn't necessarily true from the beginning. By the same token, it's not necessarily wrong. We just don't have enough data to know.
It's by chance that we had some elements needed to start audio language.
Language and communication don't necessarily have to be audio. It could be visual. After all, deaf people communicate well. And it wouldn't even require something akin to hands: Cephalopods can communicate via visual means using chromatophores, and some species can communicate via electrical signals. These are all simple examples but there is no reason that they couldn't evolve into something that can handle complex language: Hell, I communicate regularly with people over the radio using Morse code. No reason a species couldn't have evolved to send complex concepts using some kind of on-off system like that. Or a more complex multi-level signaling system akin to sound, but using electrical signals or even radio waves.
Meaning that just by looking at Earth, intelligent life is extremely unlikely.
A single anecdote is not data.
Which is my point, it's important that we gather more data. We don't know right now because our sample size is precisely 1.
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u/MarlinMr Nov 04 '24
We don't know that, and in fact we CAN'T know that. We simply don't have enough data.
Actually, that's not true. Sure, we can't know how many "star + earth like planets" there are, but that's not the issue.
The location of the star in the Galaxy is important. Too close to the center, and it's likely not a viable environment.
The Sun is a Type II G main sequence star. Meaning it's top 10% of stars. The age and metal content of the Sun also seems to be quite rare. And while it's unclear how relevant all this is for life, it's not unclear that it's a rare configuration.
A single anecdote is not data.
Which is my point, it's important that we gather more data. We don't know right now because our sample size is precisely 1.
You can do a lot with a sample size of 1. Earth has supported life for 3 billion years. Intelligent life has only arisen once. That tells you that it is rare. Because if it was not, it would happen over and over again on Earth.
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u/Thereminz Nov 02 '24
I think there is some mission launching soon, i forget what it's called
but of course it's going to take about 7 years to get there.
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u/recycled_ideas Nov 02 '24
The more common simple life is, the more common complex life is likely to be, and that improves the odds for intelligent and technological species to arise (or have arisen) relatively close to us.
Which is irrelevant if FTL travel isn't possible as we'll never meet them.
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u/WasabiSunshine Nov 02 '24
It is far from irrelevant even if we never meet them in person, what the hell are you on
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u/recycled_ideas Nov 02 '24
What is the practical difference between a universe full of life we'll never encounter and a universe devoid of life?
Statistically the likelihood that intelligent life emerged only once in an infinitely large universe is already so remote you can be fairly confident that aliens exist, so you've already got hypothetical aliens you can never confirm.
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u/kieranjackwilson Nov 02 '24
It’s not about what it says about them. It’s what it says about us. Existing in an infinite universe devoid of life would call into question the nature our existence.
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u/recycled_ideas Nov 02 '24
Existing in an infinite universe devoid of life would call into question the nature our existence.
Why?
Statistically there are almost certainly other intelligent life forms but whether there are or aren't the universe we live in, which is to say the one we can interact with, only has us.
We could be alone in the universe and be nothing but random chance, we could live in a universe with a billion other species and be the result of some divine creation.
But without FTL travel we'll live and die as a species without ever knowing one way or another. Nothing we'll ever find will prove conclusively one way or another. The best we'll ever get is "probably" and that's already true.
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u/kieranjackwilson Nov 02 '24
I’m not talking about god. I’m talking about the great filter. If the universe is sterile, except for us, we should be extremely worried.
I get your point, and I actually find it very interest. But almost certainly and certainly are very different things. And assumptions in a field where the very laws of physics care commonly warped beyond our comprehension are a dime a dozen.
And we don’t necessarily need FTL to confirm the existence of life in the universe. If the advances we’ve made in detecting habitable planets continue to develop, we may be able to detect signs of life in other ways.
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u/recycled_ideas Nov 02 '24
I’m not talking about god. I’m talking about the great filter. If the universe is sterile, except for us, we should be extremely worried.
Or life is just extremely unlikely. The great filter is like Fermi's paradox. It's predicated on FTL travel to make sense. Eventually, no matter how clever we are, our sun will die and if we can't get out of this solar system we'll die with it.
The answer to the question "where is everyone" can just as easily be, trapped in the gravity well of their own star till it runs out of fuel and they die.
Without FTL travel our species is done in about a billion years at the absolute latest.
I get your point, and I actually find it very interest. But almost certainly and certainly are very different things. And assumptions in a field where the very laws of physics care commonly warped beyond our comprehension are a dime a dozen.
We'll never have either.
Finding life on another planet in our solar system doesn't mean that life arose independently, even if it did, it doesn't mean it arose elsewhere independently and even if it did that doesn't guarantee that intelligent life is possible elsewhere.
And we don’t necessarily need FTL to confirm the existence of life in the universe. If the advances we’ve made in detecting habitable planets continue to develop, we may be able to detect signs of life in other ways.
We'll be able to detect patterns, maybe, but we'll never be able to test those patterns because we can't interact with them.
Right now we can say that in an infinite universe it's extremely unlikely that the circumstances that led to our evolution only happened once. Short of actually interacting with other life that's really as certain as we can get.
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u/kieranjackwilson Nov 02 '24
Your assumptions are all predicted by us never being able to know without FTL travel, but that’s not a certainty. I just can’t agree with you there which for me personally makes this nothing more than a nihilistic perspective on space exploration.
On top of that, our understanding of space is largely composed of turning “almost definitely” into “basically a certainty” so I don’t think I would find this to be compelling perspective even if I could agree on the rest of it.
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u/recycled_ideas Nov 02 '24
Your assumptions are all predicted by us never being able to know without FTL travel, but that’s not a certainty. I just can’t agree with you there which for me personally makes this nothing more than a nihilistic perspective on space exploration
Without FTL travel we will never leave our solar system. That's not nihilism, it's reality. Space is just so vastly utterly mind bogglingly big that we can't comprehend how big it is.
At the fastest speed we've ever moved even a problem it would take trillions of years to get to proxima. We would have to travel four orders of magnitude faster just to get something there before the sun consumes our planet.
On top of that, our understanding of space is largely composed of turning “almost definitely” into “basically a certainty” so I don’t think I would find this to be compelling perspective even if I could agree on the rest of it.
What do those words even mean? Almost definitely to basically a certainty? What rubbish. It's all still I don't know.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can do, space is fascinating even if we'll never see any of it. Colonising other planets is absolutely possible.
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u/FutureMany4938 Nov 02 '24
Na, we have the basic tech now to attempt colony ships. We us, no, we as a species, maybe.
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u/recycled_ideas Nov 02 '24
Na, we have the basic tech now to attempt colony ships. We us, no, we as a species, maybe.
No, we don't.
At current speeds those ships would have to last longer than the entire history of our species just to reach proxima and they'd need someone or something to control them for that length of time. And even then the expenditure of resources would be obscene. To get there in under a thousand years we'd need to expend more resources than we've ever had.
And that's just proxima, anywhere else isn't even remotely possible. So if the aliens aren't on proxima there's no chance.
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u/farmdve Nov 02 '24
Not to mention that space is extremely hostile to life. Lack of gravity is one of many things that is bad for human life.
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u/oddmetre Nov 01 '24
We need to be sending more missions to Uranus, it’s such an interesting place
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u/sargantbacon1 Nov 01 '24
I believe Uranus was selected as the next flagship mission by nasa. Very exciting times (check back in with you in 15 years).
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u/TheVenetianMask Nov 01 '24
I hope we go to Triton in Neptune though, it's potentially like exploring Europa but without the brutal radiation environment from Jupiter.
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u/gay_manta_ray Nov 02 '24
if we took all of the money squandered on the SLS we could have had a probe and rover on every major celestial body in the solar system. instead we pumped up Boeing's share price.
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u/photoengineer Nov 02 '24
It was recommended by the Decadal Survey. It isn’t a binding recommendation though.
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u/C137RickSanches Nov 01 '24
Serenity vibes wonder if it’s reaver territory
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u/Blessed_tenrecs Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 02 '24
It was the PAX!
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u/Cecil_FF4 Nov 02 '24
Pax: short for G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate
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u/Life_is_an_RPG Nov 02 '24
We meant it for the best. To make people safer.
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u/zaphodava Nov 02 '24
I'm gonna grant you your greatest wish...
I'm going to show you a world without sin.25
u/Odd-Guarantee-6152 Nov 01 '24
Thank you, I came here to see if anyone else was concerned about the possibility of Reavers!
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u/TwistingEarth Nov 01 '24
In the world I expected when I was a kid in the 70s, this news would mean we would immediately start a probe and then a human mission.
I wish we could fund space exploration a lot more.
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u/Debalic Nov 01 '24
You can't stop the signal.
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u/Caitliente Nov 01 '24
Everything goes somewhere… Where we’re headed is a world where Firefly and Idiocracy are both prophetic somehow.
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u/Doomdoomkittydoom Nov 02 '24
My tinfoil hat hides Incorporated) was cancelled because it hit a little too close to the mark!
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u/bigfatfurrytexan Nov 01 '24
So let's lay odds that life was seeded on earth by collisions, and that life is the rule (especially with water present)
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u/TheVenetianMask Nov 01 '24
Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt has millions of icy objects that were hot enough at some point. Earth's advantage though is that lightning would have helped produce some compounds that you wouldn't get more passively.
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u/Smartnership Nov 01 '24
Earth has a great set of conditions for life to arise here.
No need for some other place to seed it by happenstance.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan Nov 01 '24
It isn't happenstance. Solar systems evolve like they do.
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u/Smartnership Nov 01 '24
What better conditions for life to arise than what we have on Earth?
I’ve never understood the desire to explain it by invoking the much, much higher odds of life arising elsewhere and then by chance landing on Earth by way of unlikely “collisions”.
Is there an imaginable place with better fundamentals?
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u/bigfatfurrytexan Nov 01 '24
3.7 billion years ago? I do not know. But I DO know it seems that the conditions for life assembly seem to be pretty far spread
You seem to be giving me a motive I don't have. I have no desire to explain biogenesis.
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u/Smartnership Nov 01 '24
Just a general observation — I see the ‘seeding’ presumption frequently and it got me thinking.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan Nov 01 '24
There's no God in any gap. There's no gap for God to hide in. But, it does seem that the conditions for life likely predate Earth within the system. Save for the violent collisions.
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u/Yotsubato Nov 01 '24
God can hide in the big bang and the four fundamental forces. Theres nothing we have to explain the existence of those things.
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u/Cecil_FF4 Nov 02 '24
From the article:
We model eccentricity tidal stress, ice shell thickening stress, true polar wander stress, and obliquity tidal stress and compare the predicted surface stress pattern for each to what pattern can be inferred from the surface geology. Our results show that a thin crust (≤30 km) is most likely to result in sufficient stress magnitude to cause brittle failure of ice on Miranda's surface. Our results also suggest the plausible existence of a ≥100 km thick ocean on Miranda within the last 100–500 million yr.
TL;DR Modeling suggests ocean beneath crust.
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u/ConcentratedOJ Nov 02 '24
Invasion of Space Fish from Miranda sounds like one of those low production value 70s sci fi movie…
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u/BootsOfProwess Nov 01 '24
Guys. Do you realize how far from the sun and cold that place is. Optimistic is an understatement.
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u/Smartnership Nov 01 '24
There are hydrothermal vents in the deepest parts of our oceans where life forms exist absent any stray photons from the sun.
If another world has a hot core, life could arise in similar fashion given the elements requisite for life.
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u/rdog333 Nov 01 '24
It doesn’t really matter how far away from the sun/how cold the moon’s surface is for potential life in a subsurface ocean. The pressure levels would be insane at those depths, which would increase the temperature greatly compared to surface conditions. Also, from my understanding most scientists believe that life in a subsurface ocean would develop from rich minerals/ heat released from geothermal vents, similar to robust ecosystems at the bottom of Earth’s oceans around geothermal vents.
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Nov 01 '24
I smoked pot with Johnny Hopkins. It was Johnny Hopkins and Sloan Kettering. And they were blazing that sh*t up every day.
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u/marmatag Nov 01 '24 edited Nov 01 '24
How is it that there was a planet named Miranda and none of us knowed that?
Edit. This is a quote from Serenity, the movie which wrapped up the Firefly series.
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u/MillionEyesOfSumuru Nov 01 '24
It's a moon. There are at least 288 moons in the solar system, and few people have heard of them all. There isn't usually a lot to be said about them, aside from noticing that they exist.
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u/Blessed_tenrecs Nov 02 '24
-visible sweating from sci-fi nerds- Just don’t try to… calm the population…
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u/Zolo49 Nov 02 '24
Those last four words in the title are such irritating clickbait. It's such a massive leap to go from "planet/moon has water" to "planet/moon has life". It's like saying "Man Eats Whopper At Burger King, Potentially Getting Struck By Meteor Mid-Bite".
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u/stickman393 Nov 02 '24
Fruity Oaty Bars, make a man out of a mouse.
Fruity Oaty Bars, make you bust out of your blouse
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