In a few hours, weather permitting, a rocket will launch, which will send the Europa Clipper to the Outer Solar system. It’s always a bit surreal to me when launches are delayed due to bad weather, not because bad weather isn’t a real threat, it is, but it’s the fact that, in a very short time, the Europa Clipper will never have to deal with Earth weather again!
The last few years, and indeed the coming few years, the Europa Clipper won’t reach its destination until 2030, have been, and will be, a combination of being really excited, and tempering my exceptions. After the many probes sent to Mars have demonstrated that life on Mars is either non existent, or at least, very hard to find, I often wonder is Europa my last chance for finding alien life in my lifetime. Do I think Europa Clipper will find life? I think the chances are slim, of the Europa Clipper itself, finding life, but its discoveries may prompt further investigation, and maybe a future lander on the Europan surface will discover life.
But we’ve found so many exoplanets. Could there be life there? Sure, we have found literally thousands of exoplanets over the last few decades, but sadly, it is very difficult to learn anything about them. Most of them are so far away they can’t even be directly imaged, how we know they are there is due to what’s called the transit method, where the exoplanet in question passes in front of its host star, causing the star to appear a bit dimmer in Earth telescopes. So, for a lot of exoplanets, all we know, pretty much is, they’re there, that’s it.
We can make educated guesses about how hot or cold the planets are, whether or not they are tidally locked, meaning we will know whether or not one side of the planet has a permanent day, and the other side a permanent night, and we can make good guesses on how big exoplanets are.
But, finding out if there’s anyone alive out there, that’s a much much more complicated task then finding out such admittedly amazing facts as that there are planets out there that don’t have a day-night cycle, but rather their star is fixed in the sky on the day side, never moving. Consider the fact that…..
Oh right I forgot, I’ve got to debunk that whole thing. The Great Wall Of China can not be seen from the moon. It can be seen from low earth orbit sure, but so can a lot of stuff, such as airports.
So, alien structures, unless they are, ridiculously big, will not be visible even to the JWST telescope. After all, we couldn’t even see Earth structures, and yes, including the Great Wall of China, if we were standing on the moon. And yes I know “JWST telescope” is a tautology but I don’t care. The nearest exoplanet, Proxima Centauri B, is so far away that if the Voyager space probe was heading there, it would take 70,000 years to get there. Sure, we could detect bio-signatures, but that would involve decades of ruling out a non organic explanation for them. Techno-signatures, same, it would take decades to rule out a non technological explanation for them.
To be honest, I’ve largely given up on the idea of alien life being found in my lifetime. I actually wrote about how, after years of hoping alien life would be found out there, it finally occurred to me, d’uh, there’s an abundance of animal life, often with “alien like” qualities, right here on Earth!:
And while it’s true that developing an interest in the birds, arachnids and insects on our planet has just made my life so much richer, I would still love to know if there’s any life somewhere other than Earth. And maybe, if there is life on Europa, it will give up its secrets faster than the exoplanets do.
That “maybe” is doing a lot of heavy lifting though. The Europa Clipper won’t be landing on Europa. Instead, it will be going into orbit around Jupiter, from where it will be doing a lot of close flybys of Europa. The reason it’s not actually going into orbit around Europa is that it was deemed that avoiding an orbit was the best way to protect the Clipper from radiation. And, it’ll get close, in fact, it’ll get 16 miles from Europa’s surface!
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/journey-to-a-water-world-nasas-europa-clipper-is-ready-to-launch/
That’s close, but perhaps not close enough to find out if there’s life down there, especially since any life that lives there will probably live beneath the icy crust, in the oceans below. So, maybe, and as I say, that maybe is doing more heavy lifting than eh, one of those vehicles that lifts stuff, but I still can’t help finding it tantalizing.
The Europa Clipper, arriving in 2030, could find evidence that there is life below the surface, which prompts Nasa to send a lander, which in turn prompts them to send a craft that is capable of going beneath the icy crust, and finding, that there is life there, we are not alone.
You’re talking about a bucket load of things going right for all of this to happen in my lifetime though. We don’t know how to get beneath the Europan crust. We could build something that could, but, it gets destroyed on the way, setting us back at least ten years. Or, there might be no further appetite in either the U.S public or in the halls of congress for further exploration of Europa. After all, only one, just one probe, has so far visited Uranus and Neptune, that was Voyager 2, launched in 1977. Or, take Mars for instance, if there’s life on Mars, it has proved extremely hard to find. So that’s another possibility, there’s life there, but damned if we know how to find it!
So, the Europa Clipper, not even the Clipper itself, but further exploration it might cause, provides a very slim, a super slim, chance of me finally knowing that there’s life beyond Earth. But, and it makes me sad to say this, perhaps it’s for the best if the answer to the question, is there is life on Europa, takes a very long time. And that’s because many, though by no means all, humans are bad at respecting the dignity and rights of both other humans, and animals.
I haven’t quite reached the point of thinking, “Humanity is evil, if an asteroid comes this way don’t deflect it, just let it hit and wipe us out!” No, I don’t think misanthrope is the answer. I think hatred of humanity just offers a convenient excuse to not bother helping to solve the problems of the world. After all, why bother trying if humanity is a piece of shit anyway?
Humanity is capable of the most amazing things. After all, we are sending a space probe to Europa for crying out loud! And for every injustice on this planet I see, I see people who are ready to not only give of their time, but also give up their lives to stop it.
So, there is a lot of good in humanity. But, there’s also a lot of bad. So, let’s say, (this is impossible but just go with it) tomorrow the technology was invented to send humans to Europa with the same level of ease that it takes to get from, we’ll say, Ireland to the United States. What then?
Well, what then is that, what ever creatures live there will be encountering a species that has not yet managed to do away with the evils of racism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism, and many other horrible prejudices. Many of us are, extremely bigoted, I’m afraid to say!
Okay, but if there is life on Europa, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be encountering aliens that are, human like for want of a better way of putting it. In truth, it’s unlikely they’ll be human like, if nothing else because they live under water, what I mean is that it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be encountering a species that has advanced technology, or any kind of civilization. So, we’ll be encountering, for want of a better way of putting it, “animal like”, aliens, perhaps more comparable to fish, or perhaps comparable to some of the other undersea creatures, such as whales, or octopuses. (Please let there be alien octopuses!)
But, where does that leave us? Many members of the human race are horrible to animals also! There are more chickens than there are humans on Earth, and most of them are kept in conditions that would be, quite rightly, condemned as too inhumane for a mass murderer. This is how many of us treat animals.
And what about the dodo? The passenger pigeon? The great auk? Did these animals benefit from sharing a planet with us? But that was a long time ago, are we better than that now? I’m afraid not. Have a look at BirdWatchIreland’s list of Irish birds. Every bird they list also has the conservation status. I challenge you not to have your heart broken by the sheer amount of birds that are under red conservation status:
https://birdwatchireland.ie/irelands-birds-birdwatch-ireland/list-of-irelands-birds/
So the question is, assuming there is animal life there, are they safe from us?
But, maybe, MAYBE, if humanity finds life on Europa it’ll cause us to re-evaluate all of our old prejudices and we will become a better species, maybe knowing we are not alone will make us stop being horrible to other humans and animals!
I would certainly be delighted if that happened, but, where’s the evidence that that’ll happen? I mean, we are already, “not alone”, in the sense that we are surrounded by other humans and other animals. Nothing about this has caused us to put away the evils of racism, homophobia or speciesm. When the European countries discovered that they were “not alone” and that there was a giant continent called America across the ocean, did this cause them to put away the evils of bigotry and racism, or did it cause them to commit genocide against the Native Americans? I’ll give you a hint. It was the second one!
I love Star Trek. I love it because it depicts an optimistic vision for humanity, that hopefully we can some day reach. I like me some dystopian sci-fi also, but I think while dystopian sci-fi is good because it shows us a warning as to where we might be headed if we’re not careful, I think too much dystopia can be dangerous, because it can make it seem like a bleak future is inevitable. So we need dystopia as a warning, and optimistic more utopian sci-fi to keep hope alive.
And I love the scene in Star Trek First Contact, where humanity first meets the Vulcans, and this prompts them to put away the evils of bigotry and poverty, and create a wonderful society.
This scene is wonderful, so it pains me to criticize it. But, it’s exactly backwards. Humanity would have to put aside or at least temper its dark side first, and then be ready to meet aliens. If we meet aliens now, sadly, many of will ask the question, “Can I exploit, oppress, or eat that alien?”
I’m saddened, but also really glad for the fact that Europa is so hard for us to get to with our technology. Saddened because it means, if there is life out there, I will likely not know, but, it also makes me breathe a sigh of relief. Anything that lives there, is safe, for now. And hopefully first contact can wait until we have made great strides in putting aside humanity’s brutality towards other humans, and humanity’s brutality towards animals.
So, good luck to the Europa Clipper. I’ll be watching the launch today, assuming Earth weather doesn’t throw one last spanner in the works! I don’t expect it to find evidence of life when it finally arrives at Europa, but I expect to be absolutely amazed by the information it gives us about the fascinating geography of this distant world. Life or no life, Europa is an absolutely amazing world, a frozen moon with an ocean deeper than Earth’s ocean! I eagerly await getting to know this world better.
Fly safe Clipper, and be careful around all that Jovian radiation!
Ponderings Of An Autist 