{"id":115680,"date":"2020-11-09T23:22:33","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T07:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/europa-glows-radiation-does-a-bright-number-on-jupiters-moon"},"modified":"2020-11-09T23:22:33","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T07:22:33","slug":"europa-glows-radiation-does-a-bright-number-on-jupiters-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/europa-glows-radiation-does-a-bright-number-on-jupiters-moon","title":{"rendered":"Europa glows: Radiation does a bright number on Jupiter\u2019s moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/europa-glows-radiation-does-a-bright-number-on-jupiters-moon.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As the icy, ocean-filled moon Europa orbits Jupiter, it withstands a relentless pummeling of radiation. Jupiter zaps Europa\u2019s surface night and day with electrons and other particles, bathing it in high-energy radiation. But as these particles pound the moon\u2019s surface, they may also be doing something otherworldly: making Europa glow in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>New research from scientists at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California details for the first time what the glow would look like, and what it could reveal about the composition of ice on Europa\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/surface\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">surface<\/a>. Different salty compounds react differently to the radiation and emit their own unique glimmer. To the naked eye, this glow would look sometimes slightly green, sometimes slightly blue or white and with varying degrees of brightness, depending on what material it is.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists use a spectrometer to separate the light into wavelengths and connect the distinct \u201csignatures,\u201d or spectra, to different compositions of ice. Most observations using a spectrometer on a moon like Europa are taken using reflected sunlight on the moon\u2019s dayside, but these new results illuminate what Europa would look like in the dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the icy, ocean-filled moon Europa orbits Jupiter, it withstands a relentless pummeling of radiation. Jupiter zaps Europa\u2019s surface night and day with electrons and other particles, bathing it in high-energy radiation. But as these particles pound the moon\u2019s surface, they may also be doing something otherworldly: making Europa glow in the dark. New research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}