Alien Oceans
Download Alien Oceans PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get Alien Oceans book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
Alien Oceans
Author: Kevin Hand
language: en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date: 2021-09-21
Inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar system Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions have revealed that some of the most habitable real estate may actually lie farther away. Beneath the frozen crusts of several of the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn lurk vast oceans that may have existed for as long as Earth, and together may contain more than fifty times its total volume of liquid water. Could there be organisms living in their depths? Alien Oceans reveals the science behind the thrilling quest to find out. Kevin Peter Hand is one of today's leading NASA scientists, and his pioneering research has taken him on expeditions around the world. In this captivating account of scientific discovery, he brings together insights from planetary science, biology, and the adventures of scientists like himself to explain how we know that oceans exist within moons of the outer solar system, like Europa, Titan, and Enceladus. He shows how the exploration of Earth's oceans is informing our understanding of the potential habitability of these icy moons, and draws lessons from what we have learned about the origins of life on our own planet to consider how life could arise on these distant worlds. Alien Oceans describes what lies ahead in our search for life in our solar system and beyond, setting the stage for the transformative discoveries that may await us.
Alien Oceans
""Alien Oceans"" explores the intriguing possibility of life thriving in the subsurface oceans of icy moons like Europa and Enceladus, challenging our Earth-centric view of habitability. It delves into what makes an ocean habitable, even without sunlight, and how we might detect life on these distant worlds. The book highlights that the convergence of water, energy, and essential chemical elements on these moons may create plausible habitats, potentially detectable through novel biosignatures. This captivating exploration starts by introducing fundamental concepts of habitability, such as the role of water and alternative energy sources. It then scrutinizes Europa and Enceladus, examining evidence for their subsurface oceans and potential energy sources like hydrothermal vents, based on data from missions like Galileo and Cassini. The book uniquely focuses on the challenges of detecting life in these extreme environments, considering novel approaches to sampling and data interpretation. Finally, ""Alien Oceans"" progresses by discussing strategies for future exploration and life detection, including robotic missions and remote sensing techniques. The book ties together astrobiology, oceanography, and planetary science, providing a comprehensive and accessible overview of the search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system, making it valuable for anyone interested in space exploration and astrobiology.
Alien Ocean
Author: Stefan Helmreich
language: en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date: 2023-09-01
Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in Monterey Bay, Hawai'i, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Sargasso Sea and at undersea volcanoes in the eastern Pacific, Stefan Helmreich charts how revolutions in genomics, bioinformatics, and remote sensing have pressed marine biologists to see the sea as animated by its smallest inhabitants: marine microbes. Thriving in astonishingly extreme conditions, such microbes have become key figures in scientific and public debates about the origin of life, climate change, biotechnology, and even the possibility of life on other worlds. Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in
