Oceans beneath the Earth's surface

That JIMO cancellation was for me a crushing disappointment to my fanciful imagination but there is a little compensation to be had with Europes's own exciting endeavour to 3 of the icy moons, the JUICE mission...But we do have to wait a long while, sometime in the 2020s I think whereas JIMO would have launched by now?

JUICE sounds like a great mission, but sadly doesn't launch until 2022 and won't arrive at Jupiter until 2030!

The rocket won't be powerful enough to go straight to Jupiter, so has to use gravitational slingshots around Venus and the Earth to give it enough energy to get to Jupiter... hence the 8 year travel time. When it finally gets to Jupiter, it will go into orbit before doing fly-bys of Callisto and Europa. It then goes out of the ecliptic plane to look at Jupiter's auroral activity.

Finally, it goes into orbit around Ganymede in the year 2032... getting closer and closer for a few months, before diving into Ganymede itself (and hence, not surprisingly, ending the mission!!).

The science objectives can be found at this link.

Definitely a topic for a future Flamsteed talk!

I’ve never been comfortable with the “comet” theory for water on the surface of the Earth…

The deuterium issue has always been a question mark over the comet/asteroid theory.

You were saying...?

BBC: Rosetta results: Comets 'did not bring water to Earth'

Hurrah! Flamsteed ahead of the pack again! 😉

Hurrah! Flamsteed ahead of the pack again!

No, no, MIKE and Brian are ahead of the pack, again!

I find it curious why those same scientists who come to a first phase conclusion that comets are unlikely to have brought water to Earth then say that its likely to be asteroids. Why are they reverting do thinking its asteroids? Asteroids have been far far more accessible to study and have been studied in abundance, so how comes I have never heard of water from asteroids theory before?

Mike, coming to your point about finding it hard to imagine how comets could bring all the water we have on earth, I completely agreed...until I saw the last Sky of Night which demonstrated how comets could have brought water. Its not that the comets (or asteroids) themselves bring the water but its by way of their impact on the Earth surface that creates the chemical chain reactions to producing the water we have on Earth...and that made more sense to me than the actually water being carried to earth in "buckets".

But isnt there another theory that the water we have was naturally inherent in the Earth formation from the recently discovered deep reservoir wells? I'm sure Brian posted something about that somewhere? Edit: DOH, its the bloody first post of this thread!

But isnt there another theory that the water we have was naturally inherent in the Earth formation from the recently discovered deep reservoir wells?

Yes, it's in this current thread... raised by Christina:

http://flamsteed.info/forums/topic/oceans-beneath-the-earths-surface/#post-6517

<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title">Tej wrote:</div>
But isnt there another theory that the water we have was naturally inherent in the Earth formation from the recently discovered deep reservoir wells?

Yes, it’s in this current thread… raised by Christina:

http://flamsteed.info/forums/topic/oceans-beneath-the-earths-surface/#post-6517

I know, Mike, I did a post edit very shortly after, last line 🙂