The Hubble Telescope has spotted water geysers on Jupiter’s moon Europa, the best evidence yet of a subsurface ocean. WaPo reports:
The search for life in the solar system took a turn Thursday with the announcement that Europa, a moon of Jupiter first discovered by Galileo, shows signs of water geysers erupting from its south pole. The new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope represent the best evidence yet that Europa, heated internally by the powerful tidal forces generated by Jupiter’s gravity, has a deep subsurface ocean. The hidden ocean has long been suspected, but scientists have never seen anything as dramatic and overt as plumes of water vapor more than 100 miles high. If this finding holds up — the Hubble will look again, and scientists are already racing to reexamine data gathered years ago by NASA’s Galileo probe — it could provide a major boost to a much-discussed but still unapproved NASA robotic mission to explore the icy moon that circles Jupiter every 3 1/2 days. “If there’s a geyser 200 kilometers tall, and you could fly a spacecraft through it and sample the water coming out from Europa, that would be phenomenal. What if there are organics in it? That’s getting to the question of ‘Are we alone in the universe?’ ” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s top official for space science…Since the 1980s, shortly after the Voyager probes first ventured to the outer planets, scientists have suspected that Europa has a global ocean, perhaps with more water than in all the oceans on Earth, hidden beneath a shell of ice. The Galileo probe found the signature of a subsurface ocean through an analysis of Europa’s magnetic field. The surface ice of the moon has brown stains that could be the result of organic material snowing from the plumes, scientists said Thursday…This is not the first moon to show signs of geysers. Another candidate for exploration is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, which has similar south pole plumes and might have a subsurface sea, though perhaps not a global ocean as Europa appears to have.
The National Library of Norway is planning to digitize every book that exists in the Norwegian language, from the Middle Ages to today.
In which Michael Tomasky gets filleted by David Harsanyi.
You can now peruse the medical history of every U.S. President.
If anyone finds a large military drone on the East Coast, the Air National Guard would like it back.
A large military drone crashed into Lake Ontario on Tuesday, prompting a search that later had to be stopped due to weather…The MQ-9 Reaper went down about 20 miles north of Port of Oswego, 12 miles from the shoreline, around 1 p.m. after about three hours of flight, according to WSYR-TV. Col. Greg Semmel, commander with the 174th Attack Wing, told the local news station there is “probably a combination of parts that may be floating and not floating.” According to NBC News, Semmel said the cost of the drone is between $4 million to $5 million. The drone flight was part of pilot trainings allowed over three area counties.
The Beatles American albums are going to be released in a box set.
As part of it celebration of the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of Beatlemania in America, Capitol Records is resurrecting a project it began in 2004, but quietly dropped before it was completed: the label announced on Thursday that it would release “The Beatles: The U.S. Albums,” a 13-CD set that includes the American versions of the albums the Beatles released in the 1960s, or at least, those with different track sequences (and, in some cases, different mixes) than the British versions that are now the standard discography. The boxed set is due on Jan. 21. The American albums have long been a matter of dispute among Beatles fans. Collectors who would rather see them fall into the dustbin of history argue that the Beatles British albums reflect the song sequences and sound quality that the Beatles approved, and that the American releases are shorter (typically, they had 12 songs compared with the 14 on the British versions) and had reverb added to reflect what Capitol executives insisted were American sonic preferences. Because Capitol removed album tracks and added singles (which were usually not included on the British versions), the “leftovers” were often compiled on “extra” albums, catchalls that had no British counterparts. But for Americans of a certain age, these were the albums everyone grew up hearing, and many listeners prefer them.
In which David Harsanyi echoes what I’ve been saying for months: If you dislike Congress because it’s gridlocked/not passing enough laws, you don’t understand how the American system of government is supposed to work.
What’s wrong ? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. Though I can’t speak for all Four Percenters, as someone who believes this Congress has been one of the most (inadvertently) effective and underrated in American history, I can offer a number of my own reasons. Voters tend to believe a lot of myths about how American government works: things like the majority should always have its way, that popular ideas automatically deserve “up or down” votes and that Congress is more “productive” when it passes lots of laws. Klein once argued that the #1 reason a GOP Congress was “the worst ever” was that it was “not passing laws” which is the “simplest measure of congressional productivity.” The simplest, and also the most misleading. We might measure productivity by goals scored, but we could just as easily measure it by goals against average. And Boehner’s Congress, often pressured by a minority within the minority, has made saves on all kinds of terrible bills…Americans reflexively dislike gridlock. I get that. In the real world, we like to get stuff done. So do politicians. This iteration of the Democratic Party has passed more significant legislation than any other in memory – including, a complete overhaul of health-care and fiscal policy. It was this Democratic Party that championed legislation mandating the participation of every citizen without attaining even the most minimum standard of consensus or input from the minority party. So today’s intractable GOP Congress — despite its often hapless tactics, overreaches and missteps – is an organic safeguard against that kind of irresponsible centralized democracy. On that merit alone, it should be a lot more popular. And if the ideological gap continues to expand and Washington’s big notions keep intruding on the ability of states and individuals to live by their own ideas and ideals, gridlock will continue be the only remedy. As ineffective as the GOP has often been, this is how the Founders probably wanted it…Despite the widespread belief that gridlock is the primary driver of Congress’ unpopularity, we all have our own bone to pick with politicians. Trust me, not many conservatives walk around lamenting the fact that Congress doesn’t pass more laws. More than likely, many respondents are frustrated by the perception/reality that the House GOP isn’t politically effective; that it’s too weak and too accommodating. Check out the anger provoked by the recent budget deal (which is indeed, awful). If these polls deciphered why respondents are unhappy with Congress, we’d probably end up with something resembling the partisan splits we see in most other polls…But if, as some liberal pundits argue, an overwhelming majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the House because its not passing enough laws to reach some arbitrary quota, then the large majority of Americans have absolutely no clue what healthy republican government is supposed to look like.
On a related note, Republicans are three times more likely to dislike their own political candidates than Democrats. Part of this is because the Republican party is split on many issues and ideas and part of it is that it’s against the nature of Republicans/libertarians to treat their political party like a cult and their party leaders like demigods. Their political philosophy isn’t their religion.
Batshit racist dwarf Kim Jong Un executed his uncle the other day for “half-heartedly clapping” and “thrice-cursed acts of treachery” (THE WORST KIND!!). Read the incredible accusations here. It’s like they read 1984 and said, “Yes, that all sounds good, let’s do that.” As Gordon Chang put it, the North Korean blood feud is basically “Richard III with nukes.” The Atlantic has a handy annotated version of the diatribe here.
Well, if Robert Levinson wasn’t dead before, he probably is now. Did you really have to publish this story now, AP?
The Homeland season finale is tomorrow night and Dave Itzkoff sat down with Claire Danes to talk about the CIA, patriotism, the “Carrie Cry Face” and more.
The budget deal the House just passed is terrible. It undoes the sequester, doesn’t address the spending problem and limits the Senate GOP’s power to block tax increases.
On this day in 1799, George Washington died. About a week ago, South Africa’s George Washington, Nelson Mandela, died. Jana Novak compares the two.
Seven delicious cold-weather cocktails, crafted by mixologists around the country.
