Evening Reading: The Year We Make Contact
Next week the year kicks into gear with CES. The hollow annual refrain of "there's more video game stuff than ever" notwithstanding, it should at least offer a few interesting morsels. I'll be talking with Microsoft some about their hopes for the year, checking out Capcom's upcoming lineup most likely with Dark Void as the star, and going by the MAG gone gold community meetup. Besides that, it's always an adventure to hit the show floor.
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freezejeans
replyChlorophyll on Europa discovered, followed shortly by Jupiter going nuclear. This year's gonna rock!
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Awesome movie.. still..!
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Is Europa close enough to the Sun for visible light to be a viable energy source?
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Ahh ok that would explain it then. I really need to read more of his stuff, I remember thinking Rendezvous with Rama was an amazing book but I never read any of his other work.
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For a second I thought this was leaked info from the Kepler Mission announcement set for Monday
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Solar flux is about 1350 W/m^2 on the outer atmosphere of Earth, vs. 50 W/m^2 on Europa. Europa has much less of an atmosphere, so that helps a bit for a ground installation, but you're still looking at solar energy 10-20 times less than Earth.
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meant as a reply to MagicWishMonkey above.
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IIRC they expect life to use heat from thermal vents as a substitute for sunlight on Europa.
The gravity from Jupiter stretches the crust enough to keep it hot, so there should be a lot of liquid water near under all the ice.
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