
NASA To Hold Media Call on Evidence of Surprising Activity on Europa - nwrk
http://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
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dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20an...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20announcement%22&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

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avar
Don't get your hopes up. NASA has a long history of pre-teasing these
announcements, and then it turns out to be some announcement that while
marginally interesting scientifically, is really no big deal as a news story.

E.g. last year they pre-announced that they were going to make some big
announcement about Mars, and everyone was thinking "evidence of life?". And it
turned out to be that they'd just found evidence for brine flowing on the
surface in some cases[1].

While that was certainly interesting in itself if you follow what's going on
on Mars, it was just an incremental addition to the knowledge we already had
about water on Mars.

My prediction is that this Europa announcement is going to be something
similarly mundane.

1\. [http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-
tha...](http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-
water-flows-on-today-s-mars)

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otto_ortega
I think deep down, we all know it is going to unwrap that way, but still want
to hope it's something beyond that.

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flexie
Additional material on the plumes found: [http://www.nasa.gov/europa-
activity](http://www.nasa.gov/europa-activity)

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andrewstuart2
> ... surprising evidence of activity that may be related to the presence of a
> subsurface ocean on Europa

Not that it's _not_ exciting, but the title of the post and page leave a
little wiggle room that certainly made me think "evidence of life?"

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svachalek
It's certainly worded in a way that allows for the possibility that they are
hinting at evidence of life without giving it away. Based on NASA's recent
record though, it's not at all beyond them to try to get a little extra press
by hinting at a bigger discovery than they actually have. My money's on some
interesting tectonic action but wouldn't an oxygen atmosphere be something!

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XorNot
This is kind of big: sampling Europa's ocean from space would give us a very
easy way to get a lot of data

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otto_ortega
Am I the only one hoping that "evidence of surprising activity" means the plot
of "Europa Report" is making its way into reality? (minus the deaths of
course...)

I seriously believe that if we ever find life in other planes it will be on
the form of aquatic creatures not on the form of intelligent life.

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JoeAltmaier
Juno is _there_ \- with a camera. I look forward to better local pictures!

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Rooster61
Yeah, but it's in a highly eccentric polar orbit very specialized for taking
photos of Jupiter, not its moons. I doubt it will get much decent footage of
Europa, if any.

