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PeteriDish β Europaean lifeforms
Published: 2012-05-10 20:45:31 +0000 UTC; Views: 1189; Favourites: 20; Downloads: 8
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Description
This is what I have drawn at the meeting withSomething based on a sea cucumber and a jellyfish...
To avoid confusion, those are possible lifeforms that could live in the ice-encrusted global ocean of the moon Europa.
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Comments: 52
Very much so. I believe of all the celestial bodies in our solar system, Europa's the most likly one to support life. Apart from Earth.
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Indeed! Europa is probably the "second best guess," but Enceladus has water geyrs, so I wonder if there aren't at least some simple extraterrestrial extremophiles enjoying themselves in the outer solar system.
And, of course, even though the chemistry is totally different, I'm eager to see whether there is something on Titan. Because if there is, it means that "life NOT as we know it" is possible too, and therefore life could be much more common in the universe than we dare to imagine.
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That would be awesome. Hey, I wonder what the discovery of alien life would do to the whole religeous divine creation thing
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Well God created ALL life in the universe obviously! Ain't he a cool guy?
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Man, we can get sidetracked.
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Very good! The one in the front looks like a cross between a crinoid and a sea-cuecomber!
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That kinda was what I had in mind when I was drawing it! Thanks!
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Lol! 
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Neat!
They look fairly accurate, too - no eyes would be needed, it must be mighty dark down there...
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Thanks! I still wonder if at least some animals wouldnt have heat receptors. Yeah, there would probably be blackness... Iwonder if they would have bioluminescence at all, but maybe they could have some simple eyes to differ shadow from light - for communication. I imagine something small, swarm-living and vauguely squid- or fish-like, which uses bioluminscence for comunication, but on the other hand, you don't have to have eyes to be bioluminescent - Ctenophorans - so there is plenty of room for variety. I also think there would be quite simple creatures there, and such creatures are practically sightles too on Earth, so yeah. probably most of them would be eyeless. The eyes would only be of any use in detecting bioluminescent lights of other animals, I doubt there would be any light comming from the outisde.
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Sight for communication makes sense... though when you mentioned heat receptors, I immediately though of "eyes" that can see into the infrared spectrum (and yes, I know heat sensors aren't the same thing). Perhaps this would be more useful, if the life-forms down there are endothermic... Just a thought...
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Well, that's it. I don't think the heat receptors (IR eyes are a cool idea, btw. Why not? Alien eyes could well be adapted to sensing different wavelengths, right?) would be of any use in sensing prey though. Of all animals on earth, only mammals and birds are endothermic. All aquatic animals with aquatic ancestors are ectothermic, so I guess this would be true for Europa too. However, because the ecosystem is probably relying on the thermal vernts on the sea floor, the animals could sense how close or far they are from the vents, and maybe they could use the stream comming from the vents as a "torchlight" illuminating the prey items swimming close to the vents, because they would see colder silhouettes on a warmer background, but I wonder whether that would work or not...
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You're right about the ectothermic ancestry and heat receptors... of course, this is a totally different environment from Earth oceans, and I'm unsure how colder water would affect the lifestyle of these animals.
I dunno about that second idea... using a "cool" silhouette is certainly possible, but it would probably work best with ambush predators lurking just outside the thermal vents.
Of course, there's plenty of other ways to sense prey...
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Yeah. I electroreceptors would be very handy, as any animal with a nervous system and blood-pumping heart would send electromagnetic impulses far and wide. then definitely smell - chemoreceptors - and possibly touch. I am wondering whether ecolocation would evolve there, especially river dolphins rely on that sense in the "can't-see-anything" waters they live in.
On another note, The depths of our oceans are swarming with cold-blooded animals and they're doing just fine, so I guess the same would be true for Europa...
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wow! cool! they look like a cross between jellyfish and porifera!
awesome!
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definitely not anywhere close to Porifera:
[link]
[link]
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I don't have idea of what kind of creatures are this, but looks good!
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Thanks! I've met in real life and we sat down to draw something, and we ended up drawing possible lifeforms that could live on the moon Europa
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I don't realized that you refer to the moon, not the continent
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I know, that's why I wrote "Europa-ean" to make the distinction. I wonder if it doesn't look more like a typo though...
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Is for the habit of read "European", instead "Europaean". You know, man is a animal of habits
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Yeah. It's also that your mind "reads" a word as a whole, rather than letter by letter, so this slight difference can be VERY easily overlooked. I've changed the description to avoid further confusion. Thanks for pointing that out
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No problem. Also, I'm a Spanish speaker, and in Spanish the moon, the continent and the mythological figure shares the same name (Europa)
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The same is true for english too.
I am czech, and we have a different name for the continent - Evropa - so when you see the "u" there, you know either the moon or mythological figure are in question :-P
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Interesting... I've heard that in Indoeuropean idioms the name "Europa" almost always remains the same. But the "v" in Evropa is like v in English or have another pronuntiation?
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Yeah, if you say an english word with "v" and a czech word with "v," the "v-sound" is the same. But we also pronounce w and v the same way...
Another fun fact is that if you take Slovakian - the closest language to czech - they have month names derived from the widespread "pattern" of roman and germanic languages, while our month names are completely different. Just compare the Slovakian: januΓ‘r, februΓ‘r, marec, aprΓl, mΓ‘j, jΓΊn, jΓΊl, august, september, oktΓ³ber, november, december and Czech: leden, ΓΊnor, bΕezen, duben, kvΔten, Δerven, Δervenec, srpen, zΓ‘ΕΓ, ΕΓjen, listopad, prosinec. Indeed, we tend to do many things our way, but our month names have some logic behind them, always refering to something important that happens during that month. So you go through a refference to ice, to the end of winter, birch, oak, flowering vegetation, apples becomming red, apples becomming even redder, then grasscutting, brightness of sun, mating period of deer, falling leaves and finally the time when kids wish for presents... Kinda messed up, I know... But we really seem to want to do as many things our ways as we can. You see, Prague is one of the cities which have an "eiffel imitation" in them, but unlike any other of those towers, including eiffel, the "Petrin look-out tower" has an octagonal base instead of a square.
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The calendar thing it remind me that in Neolatin languages the names of the days are derived from astronomical-mythological references (for example, in Spanish Wednesday is "miΓ©rcoles" derived from Mercury) but in Portuguese, a closely idiom, they name their laboral days in a numerical way: "segunda" ("second") is Monday
By the way, you know some photo of these tower?
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That¨s interesting!
Sure! the tower is riiiight here:
[link]
[link]
It's also MUCH smaller than Eiffel...
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Smaller, but it looks huge anyway 
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Yeah I know... We went quite off topic here, but I have nthing to say about these two guys, they're a bit underwhelming in comparison with what has drawn the same day, just in a few minutes: [link]
Also I know close to nothing about these, except that the "worm" has a row of bioluminescent spot on either side of its body, and the short bristles at the end of the jellyfish's tentacles are the only parts that actually "sting"
As you can see, they were just for fun, but they aren't thought through at all...
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I see... although the "animals" looks likely and very dynamic. And I don't know the work of him, it's interesting too.
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You should check his DA gallery, he has done some really cool things in photoshop
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