Ultraviolet signals from Europa’s south pole, combined with optical information. Credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Roth (Southwest Research Institute and University of Cologne, Germany)
Mar 12, 2015
Previously detected “plumes” on Europa are no longer visible.
When Voyager 1 flew by Europa on March 1979, planetary scientists were surprised to see that the moon seemed to be completely encased in water ice. Another surprise was that Europa exhibited few craters. Instead, its surface is dominated by sinuous channels, called “rilles,” that extend for thousands of kilometers in some cases. Formations known as “flexi”, cycloid, dual ridge rilles also mystified NASA mission team members.
Some astrophysicists speculate that there are lakes of water beneath Europa’s ice, just above a salty ocean. Those speculations are based on computer simulations that seem to indicate that the surface of Europa is a thick shell of water ice floating on top of the conjectural sea. The ice is thought to experience periodic deformation as it is “kneaded” by gravitational tides from Jupiter, creating stress cracks that form gigantic ice rafts. Like massive Antarctic icebergs on Earth, they are said to float on top of the subsurface sea, crashing into each other, merging and separating due to heat from the moon’s interior. That heat is also conventionally attributed to Jupiter’s gravitational forces.
Everywhere on Europa are complexes of parallel and side-by-side grooves with no indications of fracturing. Does repeated breaking and mingling of ice rafts produce extensive parallel grooves that exhibit levees several meters high? Europa’s rilles have no analog to ice cracks on Earth. Ice breaks chaotically, so variations in thickness and composition that repeat over long distances should not be expected. Yet, repetitive patterns are observed on Europa. The swirls and loops that cover the moon have been duplicated in the laboratory using plasma discharge equipment.
On December 12, 2013, NASA announced that astronomers interpreted observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to mean that giant “geysers” were erupting from the south pole of Europa. According to Lorenz Roth of Southwest Research Institute: “By far the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa.” Those plumes are thought to come from the aforementioned cracks in Europa’s surface, similar to the “tiger stripes” on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
As is so often reported in these pages, those scientific findings are based on hydrogen and oxygen atoms excited to high energy states. What Hubble saw was ultraviolet light emissions from the energized atoms. Recently, a press release stated that nothing can be seen there; the “plumes of water vapor” are no longer visible.
One of the most surprising results of the Galileo space probe’s mission to Jupiter was the identification of electrical activity between several Jovian moons and their parent. So-called “volcanic” plumes were seen erupting from the moon Io. The plumes are the result of cathode arcs, electrically etching the surface and blasting sulfur dioxide “snow” up to 150 kilometers into space.
Io acts like an electrical generator as it travels through Jupiter’s plasmasphere, inducing over 400,000 volts across its diameter at more than three million amperes. That tremendous electric charge flows along Io’s magnetic field into the electric environment of Jupiter. Some astronomers acknowledged the electrical connection when Io’s electromagnetic “footprint” was seen in Jupiter’s polar aurora. Later, it was found that all four of Jupiter’s large moons leave their imprints in the aurora.
Scientists persist in misinterpreting rilles on Europa as “vents,” channeling water to the surface, when they are incisions on the moon caused by traveling electric arcs. It appears that Europa was gouged and torn, rather than cracked and broken. A giant auger seems to have cut across the surface, disregarding the prior topography: a sure sign that an electric arc was the active agent. The rilles show parallelism not because they are open cracks but because filamentary electric currents flowing across a surface tend to align and follow the ambient magnetic field direction.
Electric Universe advocates propose that the rilles and hot pole on Europa are heated by electromagnetic induction, where an electric current returns to Jupiter’s plasma sheath. As electrical input to Europa varies, the strength of the ultraviolet signal also varies, creating a false impression of water vapor plumes that come and go.
Stephen Smith
