From Tim Sassoon
I agree that searching for life on Europa should be an urgent priority, but I wonder why we don’t try to investigate the inner workings of a body covered in unstable ice by listening to it.
We might do this from very far away using lasers, similar to the way that one can eavesdrop on a conversation by measuring the deviation of a laser reflected off a minutely vibrating surface in the room, such as the window.
Who knows what we might find? Perhaps Europa is alive with a cacophony of whale-like megafauna calling to one another across a dark 100-kilometre-deep ocean. It would be a real achievement to hear them without setting foot on Europa.
Venice, California, US
