JOURNAL: By Jove, it's Jupiter! (Pt. 1)

Have you ever experienced this phenomenon: You hear about something that you are unfamiliar with - maybe a word or a concept - and then over the next several days it seems like you keep running into it. Well, that happens to me quite often. The most recent was with the planet Jupiter.

It all started with my interest in wanting to find out more about 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact. These science fiction films were made in 1968 and 1984 respectively.

Now although I have never seen these movies before, all my information about them has come from the "all-knowing" wikipedia website. So with that disclaimer being said, in the first movie a group of astronauts make an unsuccessful mission to Jupiter aboard the Discovery One Spaceship. The whole crew dies except for one, Dave Bowman, who comes across a black monolithic structure which turns him into a "fetus-like" being. I know - a little strange - but it is what it is. In the film's sequel, 9 years has passed and a new group of astronauts go in search of the missing spacecraft and its crew. They find Dave Bowman, who has been turned into an incorporeal being. Bowman warns them to leave the area quickly. The new crew also finds out that the black monolith is actually alien made and apparently it begins to multiply on Jupiter's surface at an exponential rate eventually engulfing Jupiter and causing it to explode into a small star. While Jupiter is in melt down mode, the crew tries to escape the area and they hear a message from an alien intelligence telling them that all the planets are theirs except Europa, Jupiter's moon. We then see icy Europa transform into a lush jungle. Finally, as the film comes to a close, it pans over the jungle and settles in on a black monolith which is standing alone waiting for intelligent life forms to evolve.

The next morning on my way to work while I was listening to the news on KTAR, the morning show anchors were bantering back and forth about Jupiter and its moon, Europa. What? Are you kidding, out of all the millions of things to joke about on a morning talk radio show they pick something that I was just reading about the previous day.

Later that day, while I was trying to find articles about the recent discovery of water on Earth's Moon, I came across an article on the National Geographic website entitled Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?. In the article, Richard Greenberg from the University of Arizona claims that there is so much oxygen in Europa's global ocean that "[t]hat amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa..." Of course we won't be able to confirm that claim until NASA develops the technology to successfully study Europa in-depth.

So what's so significant about Jupiter and Europa? Good question, I have no idea. But in my next note, I will share a few quick facts about them.

UPDATE:

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  How Realistic Was Arthur C. Clarke's 2010? [Source: Space.com, January 8, 2010]
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  Pictured: spectacular moment space missile smashes into Jupiter [Source: Telegraph, June 5, 2010]
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  First results on impact of large celestial body on Jupiter [Source: Daily News & Analysis, May 21, 2010]:
  

  An amateur Australian astronomer came across the presence of a large, black spot close to the polar region of the planet Jupiter, the biggest in the Solar System, on July 19, 2009. The impact had taken place at a very high latitude close to the planet's South Pole barely 3 or 4 hours before the spot was seen on Jupiter's dark side (at night), and this prevented it from being observed directly.

  [Now] The results of the research, conducted by Planetary Sciences Group at the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country with its headquarters at the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao and led by professor Agustín Sánchez Lavega, have appeared in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

  Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why [Source: Mail Online, May 17, 2010]:

Jupiter has lost one of its iconic red stripes and scientists are baffled as to why.The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare.The band was present in at the end of last year before Jupiter ducked behind the Sun on its orbit. However, when it emerged three months later the belt had disappeared. Update: Hubble Finds Jupiter’s Missing Stripe [Source: Wired.com, June 16, 2010].