The Case for Mars.
“The Case for Mars” is a wonderful book written by R. Zubrin dealing with the possibilities of human spaceflight missions directed to the red planet in the near future. I have chosen it as the title of this post due to another reason. Astrobiology is gradually shifting towards planetary bodies from the outer Solar System (e.g. Europa), but the focus largely remains on Mars. Here I will elaborate on the reasons as to why it still remains the prime candidate for search of extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System. Read the rest of this entry »
Europa is one of the four Galilean moons of the largest planet in the Solar System – Jupiter. It was discovered in the early years of the 17th century by Galileo Galilei. The first spectrometric analyses of the slightly larger than our own Moon satellite determined that the surface mainly consists of H2O (ice). Calculations show that the average density of the inner part of the planet is approx. 1.2 times that of liquid water on earth, which prompted the discussion about a putative ocean below the surface ice cover. 
These days science is in the news. Scientific information is no longer inaccessible to the major part of the society. It is no longer the privilege of a select few who have the background knowledge to absorb the information provided. Of course, the Internet played (and still plays) a major role in this [natural?] process. Sites such as Wikipedia have truly liberated knowledge and made it available to the general public. As it’s true for the most things in life, this might be a sword with two edges. 
