Moons in our Solar System.

-  1681  -  Two of the moons in our Solar System might support life?  There are a lot to choose from.  All of them are different.  We have 173 moons circling our 8 planets.
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---------------------  1681 -  Enceladus and Europa might support life?
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- There are 173 moons circling planets in our solar system.  Enceladus and Europa are the two most likely to support life?
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-.  What  environments does life need as we know it.
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-.  Life needs energy.  Energy can come from the Sun in the form of radiation.  It can come from internal radiation, heat generated by friction or radioactivity.
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-.  But, not too much radiation.  It needs a shield from too much radiation ,or, from too much energy arriving in the form of meteoric impacts.  The atmospheres and ice shields are two forms of protective shields.
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-.  Life as we know it also needs water.
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-.  For life to evolve with these above 2 ingredients it also needs stability for millions of years.  Life on Earth evolved over 3,000 million years.  That's a long time.
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-.  But, life's evolution does best without too much stability.  Life needs dynamics in smaller environmental changes and in geological activity that creates diversity and survival of the fittest.
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-.  Obviously, these condition existed on Earth or I would not be here talking about it.  It is interesting how much our Moon contributed to the stability and to the dynamics in Earth's environment to help our evolving life on this planet.
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-.  These 4 conditions for life might well exist on at least 2 other moons in our solar system:
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----------------  Enceladus, one of Saturn’s 62 moons.
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----------------   Europa, one of Jupiter's 67 moons
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-.  Enceladus  is the second closest moon orbiting Saturn , just 148,000 miles outside the rings.  It is an ice ball that reflects nearly 100 % of the sunlight that hits its surface.  Our Moon reflects just 7 % of its sunlight.  The average temperature on Enceladus’ surface is minus ,-205 centigrade.
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-.  Enceladus is only 311 miles in diameter, 3.9 % the size of the Earth, and 14 % the size of our Moon.  Its density is just a little more than pure water, 1.24 grams per cubic centimeter.
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-.  Cryovolcanics on the surface of Enchiladas are spewing jets of water vapor and ice into outer space.  The ice debris contains ammonia which acts as an anti-freeze.  2 % of the jets are sodium salt.  The temperature of the geysers is -93  centigrade which is 112 degrees above the average surface temperature.
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-.  Enceladus is in a locked rotation orbit around Saturn that takes 1.37 days.  Tidal heating from the gravity pull of Saturn causes internal heat that creates these geological activities.  There is likely an internal ocean beneath the ice shield that is on the surface.  Note that all 4 ingredients are there for evolving life?  Is there life in these oceans?
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-Europa is one of 4 moons you can easily see with binoculars orbiting Jupiter.  Europa is 1,944 miles in diameter, 180 % that of our Moon.
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-.  Europa's surface is an ever-changing boundary of floating ice and water oozing through cracks from the salty oceans below.  The surface temperature is - 150 centigrade.  How can liquid water exist there?
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-.  The tidal forces of Jupiter constantly twist and distort the mantle below the subsurface liquid water.  The flexing and friction generate the internal heat.  Hydrothermal vents may also be heating the oceans below the surface.
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-.  The 10 mile thick ice cover is a protective shield.  It is pockmarked like our Moon.  It's geological dynamics have refreshed surface to only 60 million years old.  Our Moon’s surface is 4,370 million years old.
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-.  Titon is another of Saturn's 62 moons.  It has a hazy atmosphere that rains liquid methane.  Its atmosphere protects it from meteor impacts and radiation.  It has a stable environment, but, it is too cold for life, and, hydrocarbons are not as nice as water for life's evolution.
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-.  Io is another of Jupiter's 67 moons.  It is a most volcanic world in our solar system.  Io is slightly larger than our Moon but has multiple erupting volcanoes, daily shooting plumes of lava 250 miles above the surface.  All of this heat is generated by the tidal forces from Jupiter.
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-.  Triton is one of Neptune's 14 moons.  It is more likely a captured Kuiper Belt Object.  There are at least 85 of these moon -size objects in the Kuiper Belt.  Triton orbits in the wrong direction.  Neptune turns clockwise every 16 hours and Triton orbits counterclockwise every 6 days.  Triton is 1,700 miles in diameter.  It surface is interlaced icy patterns of frozen nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water.  It spouts nitrogen geysers and maintains a slight atmosphere.
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-.  It is not just planets that have moons.  Over 150 asteroids also have orbiting satellites.  The planet Mars has two moons that are most likely captured asteroids.  Our moon has the most unique beginning of these total 425 Solar System objects.
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-.  Our Moon is formed by an it impact from a Mars- size proto-planet that struck the Earth in its early evolution.  The impact created an accretion disk of splashed earth crust that eventually coalesced into a single moon.  This was early in Earth's evolution 4,370 million years ago.  In the beginning the Moon was orbiting much closer to the Earth and the Earth was rotating faster.  The Moon has stopped spinning and it is further away tightly locked with one rotation for each orbit.  The Moon is still moving away from us at four centimeters per year.
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-.  The Moon has been essential for life's evolution on Earth.  The ocean tides have provided a dynamic environment of circulating ocean water and atmosphere.  It's orbit has stabilized Earth’s orbit with a 23 degree tilt , perfect for four seasons and a dynamic environment to evolve life's diversity.
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-.  Life has a wide diversity on Earth.  The diversity of moons offer life elsewhere in our solar system.  Over 1,700 exoplanets have been discovered in other solar systems outside our own.  Those planets also have moons.  This greatly expands the chances for life elsewhere.  An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1)----------  Mercury ----   0  moons
-------------  Venus    -----   0  moons
-------------   Earth  -------   1  moon
-------------   Mars  -------   2  moons
-------------   Jupiter  ----   67  moons
-------------   Saturn  ----   62  moons
-------------   Uranus  ----   27  moons
-------------   Neptune ---   14  moons
-------------   Asteroids --  170 with moons
-------------   Kuiper Belt Objects ---- 85  includes Pluto
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions, corrections. Index of reviews available ---
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
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 ---- www.twitter.com , ---   707-536-3272    ----   Friday, May 16, 2014  ---
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Cosmic Inflation, how the Universe started?

-  1680  -  Cosmic Inflation. The faster than the speed of light expansion of the early Universe produced gravitational waves in the radiation that is detected in polarized light found in the Cosmic Microwave Background.
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---------------------  1680  -  Cosmic Inflation.
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- The Universe appears to us as extremely homogeneous on the grandest scales.  It appears uniformly the same in all directions.  It spatial geometry appears to be “flat“.  This is analogous to being on the surface of the Earth.  The sphere is so large to two eyes only six foot off the ground the Earth is flat.
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-.  Using that same analogy the Universe must be an expansion much, much, greater than the 13.8 billion light-years radius that we can see from our vantage point.  “Radius” is not the right word because it can imply one direction outward from the center.  Actually, space expanded in all directions, everywhere, at the same time.  There is no center.  Yet, for it to look the same looking 13.8 billion light-years in one direction and 13.8 the light-years in the opposite direction it must have expanded faster than the speed of light.  This is where the theory of Cosmic Inflation comes from.  If the Universe did expand faster than the speed of light in the very beginning than the Universe is much larger than what we can see   What we see only appears homogeneous and geometrically flat.
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-.  By the way, space expanding faster than speed of light does not violate the Theory of Relativity that states nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.  That speed limit is constant and remains true.  It says nothing about the ability of space itself to expand faster than the speed of light.  We just can not move through space any faster than 670,633,500 miles per hour.
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-.  Cosmic Inflation to happened at 10^-38 seconds after the Big Bang, when the expansion first started.  In that trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, in that short period of time, in that instant, space expanded over 1,000 times.
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-.  As evidence of that expansion there now appears gravitational waves embedded in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation.  Gravitational waves are waves in space-time geometry.  Pushes and pulls of the fabric of space-time that is detected in the polarization of the earliest light.
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-.  Light itself is electromagnetic radiation, waves of light are actually two traveling waves, oscillating, at right angles to each other.  Alternating traveling Electric waves intermingled with traveling Magnetic waves both oscillating at the same frequency.  This frequency ranges from radio waves, to microwaves, to gamma rays, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
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-.  The waves at right angles are denoted as the E-mode and B-mode, for Electric and Magnetic waves.  Normally, the orientation of the waves is random, rotating at every angle over the full 360 degrees.  Polarization is a process where a specific orientation is selected.  Polaroid sunglasses have filters that only pass light that is oriented in a specific up-down orientation.
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-   It turns out that the B-mode waves are easier to detect.  A careful analysis of the primordial Cosmic Micro Background radiation can detect the orientation of the B-mode polarization.  This is the light that left the Big Bang opaque plasma 380,000 years, shortly after, the Big Bang.  The pattern of this polarization shows us convincingly that gravitational waves exist in the fabric of space-time just as Cosmic Inflation theory predicted.
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-.  This detected stretching and compression of space-time was imaged in the BICEP2 experiment being conducted at the South Pole.  Astronomers have witnessed an exciting new era since telescopes have been enable to see more than visible light..  New  telescopes and detectors today witness the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves, to microwaves, to infrared, to ultraviolet ,to x-rays, to gamma rays.  Each leap in technology has brought us a wave of new knowledge.
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-.  But, the electromagnetic detection has its limitations.  We can get back to the Cosmic Microwave Background which left 380,000 years after the Big Bang.  Beyond that the view is opaque.  We cannot see further because the charged plasma scattered photons to such a degree we can not see through them.  It is like looking at the surface of a cloud.  We witness the surface but we cannot see inside.
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-.  Gravity waves give us another detection system that could see inside the earlier Universe.  Science is busy building these gravitational wave detectors.
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-.  See the LIGO-  Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory to learn more about attempts to see our first gravity waves.
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-.  These gravity wave detectors are essentially a giant microphone designed to listen to gravity sound waves originating from the Big Bang and even from with Stellar Blackholes.
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-.  To get gravity waves we need massive objects that can curve space-time into swells of gravity waves.  Although direct detection has eluded us.  Indirect detection has been accomplished studying a binary pulsar system.  One of the stars is a pulsar emitting a light beam pulse like it cosmic clock.  The other is a neutron star.
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-.  The orbiting pair are slowly losing their angular momentum and spiraling in towards each other.  The loss of momentum energy is due to their massive movements generating gravity waves.  These radiating gravity waves drain energy from the system, causing the orbits to tighten down and speed up.  Because the pulsar’s cosmic clock is so accurate that lower orbit speeds could be measured precisely.  The measurements agreed exactly with the Theory of Relativity equations for the emission of gravity waves.
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-  An atomic interferometer is a new detecting technique that measures the distance between clouds of ultra cold atoms just 1,000 kilometers apart.  A laser is used to measure the distance between the clouds.  If a gravity wave comes through the clouds the distance will change to and fro as the wave passes.
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-.  Another technique is the Laser Interferometer used in LIGO which sends two laser beam's in  perpendicular directions, reflecting against mirrors, and  creating an interference pattern when they meet on the return trip.  If the distance shifts due to passing gravity waves the interference pattern will change.
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-.  BICEP2, Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization, is a detector designed to measure the very faint polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background.  The CMB appears as a uniform blackbody at 2.7 degrees Kelvin.  This detector is designed to see the small variations down to 0.000,000,85 degrees Kelvin, ( 85 nano-Kelvin per square degree pixel ).  To get there all the optics of the telescope are cooled down to 4.0 degrees Kelvin.  And the beam size of the telescope is limited to 0.22 angular degrees.
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-.  The Amundsen – Scott South Pole Station proved to be the perfect environment for this microwave astronomy.  Data was taken from November, 2009, to December, 2012.  The polarization map produced from the data appears like iron filings arranging themselves under the influence of a magnetic field.
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-.  The vortex like curling patterns were detected as B-modes which were the signs of the passage of gravitational waves generated during the brief period of Cosmic Inflation.  Cosmic Inflation theory assumes that everything started out as quantum fluctuations that got amplified with inflation.  The detected B-mode gravitational waves matched the theoretical expectations of both quantum mechanics and relativity.  Wow!  Three years of microwave data gathering ,and , extensive detailed systematic analysis down to 5-Sigma on two different modes of detection.  Science is hard work.  More announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned we have a whole new set of eye in gravitational waves.
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions, corrections. Index of reviews available ---
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
----  email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ---------
 ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  , “Jim Detrick” ----- www.facebook.com  ---
 ---- www.twitter.com , ---   707-536-3272    ----   Friday, May 2, 2014  ---
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