Word: solarization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Since Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, biologists have been trying to discover the "origin of life" through some sort of natural process occurring on Planet Earth. TIME's latest article on the possibility of life originating on some of the moons in our solar system is another extension of this false hope of finding life by means of a chance process. Your story says "all the moons lacked was the heat needed to get biological chemistry going." Life is much more complex than this. The statement made by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that "we have organic chemicals mixed...
While Europa may be the solar system's most promising Petri dish, it is by no means the only one. Saturn's Titan, larger than both Mercury and Pluto, has an atmosphere fully 60% denser than Earth's, forming a sort of photochemical haze that appears to be full of the stuff of prebiology. The problem is that Titan is cold. With temperatures hovering near -290[degrees]F and no signs yet of significant heat to drive chemical reactions, the moon could be awash in organics that are nevertheless unable to combine in biologically useful ways...
...life." Others aren't so sure; if there's lightning in the Titanian atmosphere, it could energize organic molecules in a hurry. "I would be surprised if there is life on Titan," says astronomer Toby Owen of the University of Hawaii, "but we've been surprised by the solar system before...
...dehydrated, planetologists don't rule out the possibility of subsurface water, particularly since they think that ordinary steam might provide some of the propulsive muscle behind the moon's volcanoes. Triton presents a greater organic hurdle. At -391[degrees]F, the moon is the coldest known object in the solar system. Nevertheless, it appears heavy with subsurface ice, which seems to have got warm enough, in the past at least, to flow over the landscape in a lava-like slurry. More tantalizing, dark streaks near the poles suggest that occasional geysering on the frozen moon may have spouted carbon...
Even before Cassini's work begins and Galileo's ends, other ships could be on the way to join them in the outer solar system. NASA is tentatively planning several new Europa probes, including one that will photograph its surface and take radar soundings beneath its crust. If the radar picks up the telltale echoes of liquid water, another spacecraft would be sent to land on Europa and release a heated probe designed to melt through the ice layer and look for signs of life in the seas below...