Europa's Ocean Hints at Its Habitability

Europa's Ocean Hints at Its Habitability

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Radio Archive, Episode 564 , Segment 6

Episode: Security Warnings, Transportation Revolution, Life Beyond Earth

  • May 31, 2017 11:00 pm
  • 15:06 mins

Guest: Edward Garnero, PhD, Professor of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University Astronomers last week dug into a trove of new photos and up-close data about Jupiter and its intense, swirling atmosphere. A NASA spacecraft called Juno will continue circling Jupiter until next February, when it will steer itself straight into the gassy giant and burn up. Why the suicide mission? Because NASA doesn’t want to risk Juno crashing into Europa – which is one of Jupiter’s moons and the place in all the solar system now believed to have the best chance of extraterrestrial life. If any bacteria or spores from Earth are still alive on the Juno spacecraft and end up on Europa, “we could possibly contaminate an entire alien ecosystem,” says one NASA scientist. A close look into what makes that moon such a good candidate for sustaining life. Click here for a video from NASA explaining why Europa has such a good chance of life and why it has liquid water, even though it's so far from the sun.

Other Segments

Can Everyone Eat Local?

14m

Guest: Elliott Campbell, PhD, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, UC Merced The “local food” movement has gone beyond a handful of hip, progressive towns to touch nearly every city in America. Farmer’s markets and locally-grown produce are fairly easy to find these days. But even the most devoted locavores have to get some of their diet from beyond the 50-mile radius generally considered the boundary of “local.”  If one day all Americans decided they wanted to eat only local food, would anybody starve? University of California-Merced’s Elliott Campbell analyzed food production and population trends across the country and found that, surprisingly, about 90 percent of the country could be fed by food grown nearby.

Guest: Elliott Campbell, PhD, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, UC Merced The “local food” movement has gone beyond a handful of hip, progressive towns to touch nearly every city in America. Farmer’s markets and locally-grown produce are fairly easy to find these days. But even the most devoted locavores have to get some of their diet from beyond the 50-mile radius generally considered the boundary of “local.”  If one day all Americans decided they wanted to eat only local food, would anybody starve? University of California-Merced’s Elliott Campbell analyzed food production and population trends across the country and found that, surprisingly, about 90 percent of the country could be fed by food grown nearby.