What to do if we discover life on Europa?

[xenomorph555]

The year is 2028, a country sends a prope to europa. This drills to the underground ocean (if it exists) and deploys a robotic submarine, it searches for a while and discovers an alien squid/jellyfish creature. Everyone is cheering but... now what, do we abduct it and experiment on it, do we study it in it's nature, does Elon Musk try to sell them as pets?

[SargeRho]

If we find life on Europa, it's probably not going to be very complex, primitive worms at most.

[1of6Billion]

I guess trying to study it in it's environment for as long as the battery lasts. The submarine is probably not equipped to 'catch' one of them.

[Seret]

We'd absolutely want to bring one back to Earth for detailed study, but we'd also want to study it within the context of the ecosystem that spawned it. There wouldn't be one organism to study, there would be many. It could answer a lot of questions about the variability and abundance of life in the universe. One of the most important questions would be: "Did life arise on Europa independently of life on Earth?". If it did the implications would be immense.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Seret

[NFUN]

Step 1: Get infinite fundings

Step 2: ????*

Step 3: Profit

*(????) in this case being "whatever the hell you want, you just found freaking extraterrestrial life!". I'd imagine we'd start planning a mission to capture a specimen and preserve it, at the least.

[Rusty6899]

It would be almost certain that the first priority would be to either transport one back to earth or, preferably, transport scientists there to study them. Although there would be immense difficulties in any manned mission to the Jovian system, I think that the huge importance of the discovery would justify the cost associated with the mission. It would probably justify a permanent colony being formed somewhere around Jupiter as there would inevitably be many lifetimes worth of research to perform. I imagine that a "Europa Race" would drive huge progress in the development in renewable life support systems akin to the advances in aerospace that stemmed from the space race in the 60's.

There probably isn't much going on there, though.

[Godot]

Convert it to your faith or kill it if it doesn´t want to be converted.

Nope, of course, a manned mission would be the logical next step.

An unmanned sample return mission would probably be too difficult as it would involve a robot that 1. can catch the specimen and 2. has to either keep it alive for the return,

or in a condition, where the remains don´t decay for the long voyage back to earth.

Therefore it would be more practical if we could get scientists to europa in order to research the life (and its ecosystem) in situ

[Dkmdlb]

Two data points would be huge. The most important thing would be, as Seret said, to determine whether it came about independently of life on earth. If so, that has big implications for life in the rest of the universe - if life came about twice in one solar system, then the universe is likely filled with living creatures.

Also, tangentially related - maybe the reason alien abduction holds such a prominent spot in culture is that everybody knows that's what we would do to any alien life forms we come across.

[R0cketC0der]

It would be almost certain that the first priority would be to either transport one back to earth or, preferably, transport scientists there to study them.

I think it would be first priority NOT to bring any life form from earth to Europa. Bringing life from earth to Europa would make it more difficult to detect whether it really comes from there or whether it is something that accidentally came along with the humans we send there.

[magnemoe]

I think it would be first priority NOT to bring any life form from earth to Europa. Bringing life from earth to Europa would make it more difficult to detect whether it really comes from there or whether it is something that accidentally came along with the humans we send there.

This is also existing policy, an manned mission would void it as it would be pretty impossible to ensure we did not leak some bacteria.

An sample return would be very relevant if we found life, as other say if its related to earth life or not would be important.

[JDCollie]

Open the Extraterrestrial Calamari and Exotic Cuisine restaurant we've always wanted?

[Brotoro]

The biggest question I would want answered is: Does the Europa life use the same genetic code as all life on Earth does? So I would hope your submarine is equipped with the necessary instruments to suck in some simple life form there (we wouldn't have to annoy the super-intelligent mega squids for this) and analyse the DNA (if there is DNA).

[KerikBalm]

We wouldn't want to send life there, we wouldn't want to bring that life here.

We'd want to study it somewhere else.. perhaps a lunar or martian base.

Sample return - to mars or the moon!

I would be very interested to see if:

1) it uses nucleic acids as genetic material

2) if said nucleic acid is DNA or RNA

3) if said nucleic acid encoded proteins with a triplet codon

4) if said nucleic acids use the 5 bases we use and no others

5) if said encoded proteins are composed of the same 20-22 amino acids found in earth life

6) if said encoding is by and large the same encoding (ie mapping of a tripled combination to an amino acid) as found in Earth life.

If the answer to all of the above is affirmative, we'd have very strong evidence of a single origin.

It would also have implications for the biosafety required - though we'd still want to get genomic data and RNA seq to construct phylogentic trees and see how the they fit in with us, and based upon that, proceed.

I suspect if 1-6 are all affirmative, they'd basically be just as if we found new species of extremopholes on Earth, and they wouldn't represent a hazard, and they'd be outcompeted on Earth, since they adapted to a very different niche.

[NERVAfan]

I don't think it could present a biological hazard either way. We don't worry about weird Antarctic or endolithic microbes causing plagues when scientists study them.

Even if there was complex life on Europa that was biochemically similar/identical to us, and pathogens attacking that life, it would still be really implausible ... most human diseases "jump" from other mammals, occasionally birds (like some influenza). And even if Europan life was from the same origin as Earth life, it'd pretty much have to be transmitted as something like endoliths to survive a trip through space, and so it wouldn't be any closer to us than archaea are.

And if it's NOT like our biosphere chemically, then it's even more implausible that it could be pathogenic.

Now, alien bacteria could still produce chemicals that would be toxic to us if you ate/drank something with those bacteria in it... but actual infections are insanely unlikely.

---

I don't think any life on Europa would be related to Earth life, though. I'm kind of skeptical of even endoliths surviving both the extremely energetic impact needed to hurl them to escape velocity and the probably extremely long time in space waiting to randomly hit a potentially habitable world (which are tiny compared to the size of the solar system). And Europa has an extra obstacle, Jupiter's incredibly strong radiation belts (admittedly, being inside a rock would provide some shielding, and some bacteria are quite radiation resistant).

[KerikBalm]

And even if Europan life was from the same origin as Earth life, it'd pretty much have to be transmitted as something like endoliths to survive a trip through space, and so it wouldn't be any closer to us than archaea are.

You are aware, that as a Eukaryote, you are more closely related to Archaea than the "common" Eubacteria, no?

I'm not talking just infections, I'm talking biosphere contamination.

If this Europan life could survive, say in lake Vostok... that would mean significant and permenant changes to Earth's biosphere.

The attrition rate of microbes to viruses is tremendous, but if Europan life was a separate origin, and we didn't take any europan viruses back/ they didn't make it to (for example) lake Vostok... Europan life would have a significant advantage in the form of a virus free habitat. Then maybe at the edges of its habitat, it starts evolving for more and more Earth like habitats... who knows what happens. The microbes are the base of our ecosystem, if some alien life manages to outcompete them, we're screwed.

If that Europan life is essentially the same as Earth life... well, it will likely come under viral attack, and even if it does manage to outcompete some Earth life, given their similarity it likely won't cause a large ecological disruption.

[CaptainObvious]

Although, for there to be relatively large numbers of life-forms in Europa, there would need to be a source of energy, and the sun won't cut it as it is very far away and is blocked by a massive sheet of ice. There would be more hype over reverse-engineering the nuclear fission respiration used by these life-forms.

[Nuke]

i expect this will result in a new discovery channel reality show: deadliest catch europa

[Idobox]

We have no idea what the European ocean looks like, it might be more similar to Earth than we expect. And even if it isn't, it doesn't mean life from there couldn't become invasive. Imagine simply cells very close to bacteria, but that are 10% more efficient in turning glucose into ATP, they would replace Earth bacteria in decades.

Getting samples back from the surface of Europa would be a tremendous challenge, we're talking 80km/s of deltaV, in situ fuel production still needs to be developed.

In the first time, we would send super smart probes. Then, maybe we would send people on the orbit of Europe, but we have to figure how to keep them alive for years in microgravity and high radiation environment. We could also land them on another moon, for radiation shielding, in situ fuel production and gravity (Ganymede appears to be the less hostile one). The proximity would allow them to control the probes with much lower delay, and maybe to even get a sample back, although quarantine measures would be drastic. But the technology needed to do something like that is very far from being available, and nobody would try anything like that before we have at least a demonstrator on the Moon.

[rtxoff]

If we find snake like worms better get the hell out of there.

[Fr8monkey]

[Dodgey]

Darn I was just about to post that.

[StuntMax]

Everyone is cheering but... now what?

....Life on Europa?

Any chanche there is oil underground?

If so, then I may have a pretty vivid idea.

[KerikBalm]

Although, for there to be relatively large numbers of life-forms in Europa, there would need to be a source of energy, and the sun won't cut it as it is very far away and is blocked by a massive sheet of ice. There would be more hype over reverse-engineering the nuclear fission respiration used by these life-forms.

Highly unlikely, if there is heat to warm the H20 to make it into ice, then there is a thermal gradient available, which can drive some chemistry similar to "black smokers" on Earth, which life uses for energy and is not nuclear in nature.

[Sky_walker]

....Life on Europa?

Any chanche there is oil underground?

If so, then I may have a pretty vivid idea.

US invasion force?

Operation Europa Freedom / Ice Storm?

[FleshJeb]

We have no idea what the European ocean looks like...

Topless French women EVERYWHERE.

Back to the real question. I think we'd send out a LOT of probes, and MAYBE in 50-100 years send a manned mission.