Europa Chemistry

I always get giddy when talking about Europa, as many astronomers do.  It’s one of the most fascinating places in our solar system when it comes to the search for life.  It has lots of water, likely contained in a subsurface ocean.  It’s heated though a gravitational tug of war with Jupiter and the other Galilean moons.  And, as of recently, it has a chemical production system that matches Earth’s. I wonder what goes on beneath the thick ice of Europa.  Is there an ecosystem filled with alien life down there?  Life in Earth’s oceans feels very alien, but creatures from...

Newest Moon Rocks Analyzed in 40 Years

Some days at work, when I am in the Space hall at the Ontario Science Center, I take a close look at the golf-ball-sized Moon rock we have on display.  I think about how this rock was brought back on an Apollo mission over 40 years ago, how it had been an untouched part of the Moon for Billions of years before this, and how it has taught us so much about how the Moon, and subsequently the Earth, formed.  But now it’s time for a new generation of Moon rocks to be analyzed, and China is in the nation...