What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?

January 6 Tapes?

Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.

For all your high talk about your Christian moral background…you’re looking less and less like you have any kind of moral background.

If You are a Patriot and Don’t Loathe RINOs…

Let’s talk about RINOs, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.

Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.

Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.

I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.

In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.

Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.

The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”

Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.

We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.

And yet,

What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?

In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).

We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)

We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Lauren Boebert?).

That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.

Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”

If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.

That should make you good and mad.

The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.

I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.

In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.

In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.

So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.

We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.

What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*

We know it. What is going to be done about it?

*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.

If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.

RINOs an Endangered Species?
If Only!

According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.

Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.

I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.

But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.

The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.

Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.

I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.

This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?

Justice

It says “Justice” on the picture.

And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.

But what is it?

Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.

Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.

Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.

—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)

Justice Must Be Done.

Trump, it is supposed, had some documents.

Biden and company stole the country.

I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,658.90
Silver $31.72
Platinum $1,010.00
Palladium $1,038.00
Rhodium $5,100.00
FRNSI* 127.624+
Gold:Silver 83.824+

This week, at Friday close:

Gold $2,654.30
Silver $32.26
Platinum $999.00
Palladium $1,038.00
Rhodium $5,025.00
FRNSI* 127.402-
Gold:Silver 82.278+

Interestingly silver did fairly well this week (it’s now worth more than 1/83rd of an ounce of gold now), gold, on the other hand, is slightly down, Platinum seems to be the biggest loser this week.

*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) is a measure of how much the dollar has inflated. It’s the ratio of the current price of gold, to the number of dollars an ounce of fine gold made up when the dollar was defined as 25.8 grains of 0.900 gold. That worked out to an ounce being $20.67+71/387 of a cent. (Note gold wasn’t worth this much back then, thus much gold was $20.67 71/387ths. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.) Once this ratio is computed, 1 is subtracted from it so that the number is zero when the dollar is at its proper value, indicating zero suckage.

How QR Codes Work

A Common Phenomenon

Regardless of what you think about Flat Earth, this video should serve to illustrate a common mistake that I see many “conspiracy theorists” (the stupid kind I mean) make.

Basically the man in question went to the NBC website and saw a distorted version of this very famous, even iconic photograph, which even has a nickname, the Blue Marble, because when it came out in the early 1970s there was all sorts of buzz about how the Earth was a Big Blue Marble (great way to propagandize the kiddies!):

…and then proceeded on the implicit assumption that the distortion was the original. In the distortion, it appears as though the Red Sea (between Egypt and Saudi Arabia) was cut in half. Since it isn’t in fact cut in half, he assumed this was proof that the Blue Marble photo was originally faked. (BTW this photo should be 3000 pixels across if you want to fullscreen it, etc. As a bonus, it shows Antarctica so that’s doubly annoying to flerfers.)

When he did a bit more searching for the image, including on the NASA website, he started finding the actual original (with properly rendered Red Sea) a lot and assumed that NASA or someone had been going all over the web and cleaning up their mistakes…except, apparently, on NBC’s website, which somehow got overlooked.

I can assure anyone here who might actually think this guy is onto something and the distortion is the real version, that I have print books from the 1970s that show the photo with an uninterrupted Red Sea. Unless you want to claim that NASA broke into my house and swapped out the books with equally-worn copies…

This is a classic example of a phenomenon I see sometimes…a person with a nutty conspiracy theory latches onto the first thing they see, and if it happens to contain a bona fide error in it, there’s no convincing them of it; they will spin a huge unlikely story as to how “their” version of whatever it was is the correct one, and that the correct one is actually the fake used for a cover up.

Another example of this was a report early on in the Sandy Hook saga that described the wrong gun as being in someone’s trunk. Attempts to correct it were treated as part of the cover up. Interesting that people who would normally have no trouble believing a YSM jurinalist would fuck up especially when the subject was eeevil gunz, believed that this particular jurinalist at this particular time was infallible–because they wanted to believe Sandy Hook was a fake.

What’s going on in both cases is seizing on (apparent) evidence that one’s pet mistaken theory is true, and resisting any attempt to show that this particular piece of evidence, at least, is flawed–sometimes to the point of having to posit another incredibly elaborate or expensive effort to hide the “real” evidence. A mistake, a distorted jpeg, or something similar. This is actually a form of confirmation bias.

The Moons of Jupiter

Jupiter has 95 (yes, ninety five) known moons (as of 5 February 2024). When I was a kid, the number was twelve, though older books in the elementary school library would show eleven. Then a 13th moon was discovered when I was ten (1974), another one the following year, and then the Voyager spacecraft found three more…and at that point they decided they really ought to get on with naming them. The first five or so had been named for quite some time, it was the remaining six seven eight nine (dammit) twelve that hadn’t been officially named though there were several suggested lists. (The next discovery wasn’t until 2000; the remaining 78 moons have all been discovered since then). Today, of course the list has outstripped our ability to think of names and the newly discovered ones are given temporary designators like S2022 J 3, for 3rd Satellite of Jupiter discovered in 2022.

Astronomers love to categorize things. And the moons of Jupiter are no exception. There are nine categories and I will cover them almost in order of distance from the planet.

The Main Moons, or Galilean Moons, are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, in order outwards from Jupiter. These are BIG. They are bigger than any dwarf planet (and that includes Pluto). Ganymede is bigger than Mercury and Callisto almost beats Mercury as well. All are spherical, as one would expect from bodies that size. The innermost orbits at 422 thousand kilometers (from the center of gravity of the Jovian system, essentially the same as the center of Jupiter), the outermost at 1,883 thousand kilometers. (For comparison, our Moon orbits at 384 thousand kilometers, so these are all further from Jupiter than our Moon is from us.) These were all discovered about 30 milliseconds after Galileo first pointed a telescope at Jupiter in 1610; you can see them in binoculars. They all orbit in nearly circular orbits (the key word, as we will see, is nearly), in planes within half a degree of Jupiter’s equatorial plane, all in a prograde (forward) direction. Forward, here, means counterclockwise as seen from way out in space, over the Sun’s north pole. Almost every large body in the solar system both orbits (either the sun or a planet) and rotates prograde, including Earth and the Moon.

Another group of four moons are called the “Inner Moons,” they all orbit within the orbit of Io. The first of these is the first moon to be discovered since Galileo, in 1892, and got named Amalthea, which is an irregular lump about 167 km across. So are the others, which are the three discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979/80.) There’s also a lot of debris in that region, forming Jupiter’s rather tenuous ring system. Again, these are nice and tidy, nearly circular orbits in Jupiter’s equatorial plane, all prograde.

Together these groups are called the “Regular Satellites” of Jupiter, which means the other 87 moons are all “Irregular Satellites.”

The Irregular Satellites all orbit much further away from Jupiter than Callisto (the outermost regular satellite). These in turn are divided into prograde and retrograde (orbiting backwards) groupings, each of those is divided again into actual groups.

Prograde groups include Themisto…which is a group all unto itself. It’s the innermost of the irregular satellites averaging roughly 7.4 million km from Jupiter. It’s in a very elliptical orbit (0.340 on a scale from 0 [circular] to 0.9999… [skinniest ellipse possible]) at a 43.8 degree inclination, not at all tidy. It takes about 130 days to complete one orbit about Jupiter.

The next group is the Himalia group of nine satellites, named after its largest member, which is roughly 140 km across. They all orbit at about a 28 degree inclination with eccentricities ranging from 0.1 to 0.24. Average distance from Jupiter is 11.1 to 12.3 million kilometers, most of them being 11.4 or 11.7. They take about 260 days to orbit Jupiter. Four of these are big enough to be in the “classic” 14 satellites from before Voyager I and 2. These orbits are all quite similar to each other, hence the grouping together. It’s likely these were all part of a larger body at some time in the past.

The Carpo group, 2 satellites, are 16-17 million kilometers from Jupiter and are inclined at 50 degrees, which subjects them to all sorts of wacky perturbations resulting in cyclical changes to their orbits. Their eccentricities are very different from each other.

And then there is Valetudo, a group unto itself, in an eccentric orbit 17 million kilometers from Jupiter, at a lesser inclination than the Carpo group. It actually crosses the orbits of other groups’ satellites.

Now we get to the retrograde groups, three of them. The Ananke group ranges from 19-22 million kilometers from Jupiter and there are 26 of them. A quick eyeball scan of the list on Wikipedia shows inclinations from 145-152 degrees (a retrograde orbit is thought of as going forward but being “flipped over” more than 90 degrees so they only look backwards. If that’s hard to visualize, imagine these are at a 60 degree or so tilt, but going backwards in their orbits. Inclinations are mostly 0.20 to 0.23. It’s thought that these have a common origin, their orbits are just too similar for it to be pure chance.

The other two groups are the Carme and Pasiphae groups, with 30 and 18 members respectively. They overlap in terms of average distance from Jupiter, 22.6-24.2 million kilometers from Jupiter, taking as long as two Earth years to make one orbit. The Carme group inclinations are all about 164 degrees (i.e., 74 degrees but going around backwards), the Pasiphae groups are in a broader range centering on 150 degrees or so. In each case the satellites in each group are thought to have a common origin.

“Common origin” or “were once part of a larger body”, by the way, imply that there are more undiscovered fragments of what they used to be. The smallest size I see in the table is ~1 km, but conceivably there could be a lot of smaller and smaller pieces. 100 meters, boulder size, gravel size, sand grain size…at what point do you stop and say “this isn’t a moon any more”? It’s a serious question from me, actually, and I have no idea if any “real” astronomer has given it any thought.

So…broad patterns? Note that the retrograde satellites (by count, most of the satellites are in these groups) are all further out than any of the prograde ones. The retrogrades are almost always 2 km or less in size, though each group has one fairly large body in it, 35-60 km across, probably the “main” piece of whatever broke up to form the group. It’s thought that the retrograde groups resulted from captured asteroids.

There also seems to be a hard 24 million kilometer limit. I haven’t cranked numbers but I suspect that beyond this range the Sun’s gravitational pull is stronger than Jupiter’s, so it would tend to grab any satellite of Jupiter’s that happened to be in a larger orbit than this.

In any case, the retrogrades are basically debris, and even the irregular progrades are basically junk too. Except for the fact that they make good studies in orbital mechanics, they’re pretty uninteresting.

The interesting moons are the Galilean moons. And with that I submit my entry to the understatement of the year contest.

The Galilean Moons
(because who gives a rat’s ass about the other 91 moons?)

The Galilean moons are, in order outward from Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Jupiter plus these moons actually looks like a miniature solar system, and you’ll hear the term “Jovian system” used to refer to the ensemble as a whole.

Although Galileo is given credit for discovering these moons, they were also seen by Simon Marius, and he gave them their names; Galileo simply called them Jupiter I, Jupiter II, and so on, a system which continues to this day; now Roman numerals are given out to newly discovered moons in the order they are named.

“Io” is pronounced “EYO-oh.” Don’t be like the clueless science jurinalist who pronounced it “ten” when the Voyagers flew by. (In his defense, that was the era when Bo Derek was the Queen Hot Woman of All Time thanks to the movie 10…for a whole two months.)

Here is a picture showing relative sizes, Jupiter and the four Galileans, in order top to bottom. This is actually a composite, just to show relative sizes; you’d never see this exact thing all at once.

And another, a real-time shot of Jupiter and all four Galileans. Since some are closer than others, it’s not quite to scale; it is however a “real” snapshot of all five bodies at the same time. If you were to somehow have been able to stand there, this is what you’d have seen. Two of the moons are probably invisible; if so, right click and select “open image in new tab” and even there they will be just single-pixel dots, and one is barely more than a dot)

And now for some raw numbers, with our own Moon tossed in for comparison:

Name	Diameter (km)	Distance from Primary (km)	Orbital Period (days)	Orbital Period (compared to Io)	Density (water = 1)
Io	3660	421,800	1.769	1	3.528
Europa	3121.6	671,100	3.551	2	3.014
Ganymede	5268.2	1,070,400	7.155	4	1.942
Callisto	4820.6	1,882,700	16.689	9.4	1.834
Moon	3474.8	384,399	27.3	irrelevant	3.344

Note that Ganymede is by far the largest; it’s even larger than the planet Mercury.

But also note something else: In the time it takes Ganymede to orbit Jupiter once, Europa will orbit exactly twice, and Io will orbit exactly four times. This is known as an orbital resonance. However, they won’t line up all at once. Io will lap Europa on one side of Jupiter, and then on the other side of Jupiter, Europa will lap Ganymede. See the animation below, where the inner moons will lap “above” Jupiter, and Europa and Ganumede will lap “below” Jupiter.

That’s a simulation, what’s below is based on actual data (notice the time stamp):

This turns out to be important.

Another thing to note is the average densities. Io and Europa (and our Moon) all have densities a bit above 3.0 that of water. We know our own moon is a big ball of rock with very little nickel-iron in its core. And your average generic rock has about that density (though there are plenty of kinds of minerals that come in far higher, such as for instance native gold, a/k/a gold nuggets). So this isn’t unreasonable for moons of Jupiter. However Ganymede and Callisto are considerably less dense, an indication that they are largely ice.

Jupiter I: Io

Io has a very unusual appearance, it almost looks like a pizza. As it happens, it is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. If you don’t like its looks, come back an a few centuries; the entire surface will have been replaced. That’s how volcanic it is. it even has mountains taller than Everest!

This is a pair of pictures of Tvashtar Paterae, taken in November 1999 and February 2000, and yes, that’s lava in the right hand frame.

Volcanism requires heat. And if you’ll recall, Mars…a considerably larger body…does not have volcanism any more (in spite of the largest known volcano being there). Mars has cooled off too much. Why hasn’t Io cooled off?

The answer is (wait for it) tidal forces. (I warned you before I started the tour of the solar system that tidal forces would show up when you least expect them…I did warn you.) Io is in a slightly elliptical orbit (very slightly but still, not quite perfectly circular) and that means it slows down and speeds up in different parts of its orbit, while its rotation (tidally locked to Jupiter) is at a constant rate. This causes Io to stretch and compress, which generates the heat, which causes the insane amounts of volcanism. The surface coloration is largely sulfur. Io’s eruptions have been captured on camera by Voyager, the Galileo orbiter, and Juno.

Some of the stuff that gets erupted ends up in orbit around Io, as very small particles perhaps even single atoms, and some of that gets heated and escapes into orbit around Jupiter. At some point much of this stuff gets ionized. As a result there’s a “neutral cloud” near Io, and a donut or torus of ionized matter roughly where Io orbits. Since this stuff is charged and moving, it actually contributes to Jupiter’s magnetic field…perhaps as much as 50 percent of the total.

This picture not only shows the torus of ionized Io-stuff in red and the neutral cloud in yellow, it shows a third feature in green, the flux tube, which connects Io to Jupiter’s polar regions and can cause aurora-like displays in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But Io itself can have interesting displays, visible when it is in Jupiter’s shadow:

(From the caption on Wikipoo: Auroral glows in Io’s upper atmosphere. Different colors represent emission from different components of the atmosphere (green comes from emitting sodium, red from emitting oxygen, and blue from emitting volcanic gases like sulfur dioxide). Image taken while Io was in eclipse.)

Another source of tidal forces is the pull of Europa and Callisto, with the resonances enhancing the effect.

This was a total surprise when it was discovered back around 1980. And since then it has become clear to planetary scientists that in many cases the moons of the outer planets can be more interesting than the planets themselves.

Jupiter II: Europa

Most especially the second Galilean moon, Europa. What we see when we look at Europa is a solid sheet of ice; it’s the smoothest body in the solar system, and appears to have a 100km thick layer of water above the typical rocky interior. What makes it interesting, though, is that that 100km layer is almost certainly not frozen solid. It’s probably tens of kilometers of ice, sure, but above a world-wide ocean of liquid water, a lot of it, probably more than we have on Earth. (So aliens coming here to steal our water [which is ridiculous because water is almost certainly the most common compound in the universe] would be better off going to Europa.)

(From Wikipoo caption: Closeup views of Europa obtained on 26 September 1998; images clockwise from upper left show locations from north to south as indicated at lower left.)

That water is likely heated by volcanic activity too, for the same reason as Io…but less so. Tidal forces are much lower here. However, the forces will often crack the ice layer, and liquid water will rise under the pressure, with the breaks freezing over, which results in the darker lines. These areas might offer better access to the water, which we want because…

Water is the one thing all life (that we know of!) needs. Not oxygen, but water! This makes Europa a prime candidate for extraterrestrial life, especially since we know that on Earth, “smokers” on the ocean floor host entire ecosystems, and such “smokers” are almost certainly present on Io.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, staying in his lane academically, has said he wants to go ice fishing on Io. He’s not alone in this.

On the 10th of this month, we will launch the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft that will orbit Jupiter, but do so in a way that maximizes the time it will spend on Europa flybys. It’s the largest interplanetary spacecraft developed by NASA. Since it is so big, the booster needs help; it will do gravity boosts off Earth and Mars before arriving at Jupiter in April 2030. This is just a preliminary for a Europa Lander, still on the drawing board.

We’re going after Europa with gusto!

Jupiter III: Ganymede

Ganymede is also covered in ice, with a likely liquid ocean 200km down. It’s colder and harder to get to, so it’s not as tantalizing as Europa. It’s not completely geologically dead, however: it apparently has at least some liquid iron in its core since it actually possesses a magnetosphere (so far the only moon known to do so). It’s the largest moon in the solar system. As I’ve noted before, it’s actually larger than the planet Mercury, but only 45 percent as massive since so much of it is ice, and because Mercury has a very large iron core for its size.

This is Tros crater. In mythology, Tros was Ganymede’s father, and Ganymede himself was Jupiter’s cupbearer (and likely homosexual lover)

Jupiter IV: Callisto

Callisto is a bit smaller than Ganymede, and is the third largest moon in the solar system. (#2 is Titan, a moon of Saturn. And our moon is at #5, just ahead of Europa.) Callisto is remarkable for being very heavily cratered, an indication that its surface has not eroded much or been “worked over” by processes on Callisto itself. It’s far enough out from Jupiter to have very little effect from tidal forces, and it’s not in any sort of resonance with the other moons. Callisto, in fact, has an impact basin named Valhalla, which is 3800 kilometers across!

Callisto may, in fact, be an even mixture of rock and ice, not even having differentiated much with the heavy stuff going down to the core when it formed.

Of the four, Callisto is of least interest for finding life, but it is of great interest for perhaps preserving it. It’s far enough away from Jupiter’s magnetic field and radiation belts that it could perhaps be useful for a manned base from which we could explore the rest of the Jovian system.

(From Wikipoo: Voyager 1 image of Valhalla, a multi-ring impact structure 3,800 km in diameter)

So that is a summary of the Moons of Jupiter, all of which rank among the most interesting bodies in our solar system. Were they not in orbit about Jupiter, they’d all be planets in their own right.

As a bonus I will conclude with this diagram, which shows many of the moons in the Solar System, with Pluto and Earth thrown in for good measure. Any moon large enough to force itself into a spherical shape is shown here.

(Oh, and note the Red Sea glitch doesn’t appear on this copy of the Blue Marble photo.)