31 May 2017
Send an ear: Listening for sounds of life in the solar system
By Stephen Battersby
YOU are entering an alien soundscape. The first thing you notice is a chorus of curious pings – or perhaps you’d call them chirps. Underneath their bright staccato is an almost ominous roar. And faintly, in the distance, could that be the whistle of a railway train?
In a few years, sounds like these might be proclaiming good news for life on Europa, the pale moon of Jupiter that may be one of the most hospitable spots in the solar system. Although its surface is an airless landscape of cracked ice, all the evidence says that beneath that bleak shell is a liquid water ocean stretching hundreds of kilometres down to the rocky mantle below. If life can thrive on Earth’s ocean floors, feeding on the chemicals that gush from the rocks, why not on Europa too?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431280-100-sounds-of-life-in-the-solar-system/
