The search for life inside Jupiter's icy moons

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February 16, 2023

This week, our top story is on the soon-to-launch JUICE mission, a probe from the European Space Agency that early next decade will work in tandem with NASA's Europa Clipper mission to investigate the prospects for life inside Jupiter's icy, ocean-bearing moons. Together, these two missions are preparing the way for future, more ambitious studies of Jovian satellites, including efforts to send landers and even submersibles for deeper explorations of these enigmatic buried seas. Elsewhere, we have stories on the latest spate of UFO-spoofing spy balloons, the not-so-spooky nature of quantum entanglement, the 10th anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor blast, a curious "peekaboo" galaxy, and more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics

Extraterrestrial Life At Jupiter, JUICE and Clipper Will Work Together in Hunt for Life A soon-to-launch European mission is the first of two spacecraft—the other from NASA—that will hunt for signs of habitability on Jupiter's icy moons By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Defense Why We're Suddenly Spotting Spy Balloons Every question we have about the airborne objects that may or may not be spying on the U.S. By Sophie Bushwick

Black Holes Quantum Entanglement Isn't All That Spooky After All The way we teach quantum theory conveys a spookiness that isn't actually there By Chris Ferrie

Astronomy The Asteroid Blast That Shook the World Is Still Making an Impact The Chelyabinsk asteroid slammed into Earth's atmosphere 10 years ago, the largest impact in over a century By Phil Plait

Astronomy Mysteriously Young 'Peekaboo' Galaxy Could Reveal Secrets of Early Universe A strange discovery could provide a window into the universe's earliest galaxies By Allison Gasparini

Black Holes Has Anyone Created a Black Hole on Earth? A lab-made black hole is beyond current technology, but could be possible one day By Adam Mann

Quantum Physics Tiny Bubbles of Primordial Soup Recreate Early Universe New experiments can re-create the young cosmos, when it was a mash of fundamental particles, more precisely than ever before By Clara Moskowitz

Astronomy 'Impossible' New Ring System Discovered at the Edge of the Solar System Astronomers are puzzled by a ring around the icy dwarf planet Quaoar that is much farther from its parent body than thought possible By Robert Lea,LiveScience

FROM THE STORE Special Editions Volume 30, Issue 1s

QUOTE OF THE DAY "There is no--again--no indication of aliens or other extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns." White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, on the nature of the unidentified flying objects recently shot down by U.S. fighter planes.

FROM THE ARCHIVE It's Never Aliens--until It Is 2017 was a banner year for scientists seeking aliens—even though they (apparently) didn't find any By Lee Billings | January 2018

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