Tech
Countdown to mission hunting alien life on a distant moon
In a few hours, a spacecraft should blast-off from Florida on the hunt for signs of alien life.
Its destination is Europa, a deeply-mysterious moon orbiting the distant planet Jupiter.
Trapped under its icy surface could be a vast ocean with double the amount of water on Earth.
The Europa Clipper spacecraft will chase a European mission that left last year, but using a cosmic piggyback, it will overtake and arrive first.
That won’t be until 2030 but what it finds could change what we know about life in our solar system.
A moon five times brighter than ours
Years in the making, the Europa Clipper launch was delayed at the last minute after hurricane Milton blasted Florida this week.
The spacecraft was rushed indoors for shelter, but after checking the launchpad at Cape Canaveral for damage, engineers have now given the go-ahead for lift-off at 1206 local time (1706 BST) on 14 October.
“If we discover life so far away from the Sun, it would imply a separate origin of life to the earth,” says Mark Fox-Powell, a planetary microbiologist at the Open University.
“That is hugely significant, because if that happens twice in our solar system, it could mean life is really common,” he says.
Located 628m km from Earth, Europa is just a bit bigger than our moon, but that is where the similarity ends.
If it was in our skies, it would shine five times brighter because the water ice would reflect much more sunlight.
Its icy crust is up to 25km thick, and sloshing beneath, there could be a vast saltwater ocean. There may also be chemicals that are the ingredients for simple life.
The spacecraft is just longer than a professional basketball court and weighs around the same as an African elephant
© BBC
Scientists first realised Europa might support life in the 1970s when, peering through a telescope in Arizona, they saw water ice.
Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts captured the first close-up images, and then in 1995 Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft flew past Europa taking some deeply puzzling pictures. They showed a surface riddled with dark, reddish-brown cracks; fractures that may contain salts and sulfur compounds that could support life.
The James Webb telescope has since taken pictures of what might be plumes of water ejected 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the moon’s surface
But none of those missions got close enough to Europa for long enough to really understand it.
Flying through plumes of water
Now scientists hope that instruments on Nasa’s Clipper spacecraft will map almost the entire moon, as well as collect dust particles and fly through the water plumes.
Britney Schmidt, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell university in the US, helped to design a laser onboard that will see through the ice.
The strange surface of Europa – captured by Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
“I’m most excited about understanding Europa’s plumbing. Where’s the water? Europa has the ice version of Earth’s subduction zones, magma chambers and tectonics – we’re going to try to see into those regions and map them,” she says.
Her instrument, which is called Reason, was tested in Antarctica.
But unlike on Earth, all the instruments on Clipper will be exposed to huge amounts of radiation which Prof Schmidt says is a “major concern.”
The spacecraft should fly past Europa about 50 times, and each time, it will be blasted with radiation equivalent to one million X-rays.
“Much of the electronics are in a vault that’s heavily shielded to keep out radiation,” Prof Schmidt explains.
The spaceship is the largest ever built to visit a planet and has a long journey ahead. Travelling 1.8 billion miles, it will orbit both the Earth and Mars to propel itself further towards Jupiter in what is called the sling-shot effect.
Europa Clipper will travel for five and a half years to reach Jupiter
© BBC
It cannot carry enough fuel to motor itself all the way alone, so it will piggyback off the momentum of Earth and Mars’s gravitational pull.
It will overtake JUICE, the European Space Agency’s spaceship that will also visit Europa on its way to another of Jupiter’s moons called Ganeymede.
Once Clipper approaches Europa in 2030 it will switch on its engines again to carefully manoeuvre itself into the right orbit.
The left image shows the natural appearance of Europa, and the right image uses colour to highlight the water-ice crust
© NASA/JPL/DLR
Space scientists are very cautious when talking about the chances of discovering life- there is no expectation that they will find human-like creatures or animals
“We are searching for the potential for habitability and you need four things – liquid water, a heat source, and organic material. Finally those three ingredients need to be stable over a long enough period of time that something can happen,” explains Michelle Dougherty, professor of space physics at Imperial College in London.
And they hope that if they can understand the ice surface better, they will know where to land a craft on a future mission.
An international team of scientists with Nasa, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab will oversee the odyssey.
At a time when there is a space launch virtually every week, this mission promises something different, suggests Professor Fox-Powell.
“There’s no profit being made. This is about exploration and curiosity, and pushing back the boundaries of our knowledge of our place in the universe,” he says.
A jury in Los Angeles has ruled that tech giants YouTube and Meta are liable for negligence in a closely watched case involving a young woman who said she became addicted to their platforms from childhood.
The panel awarded the plaintiff $3 million in compensatory damages, assigning 70 percent of the liability to Meta. Jurors also determined that both companies could face additional punitive damages, with a decision on that yet to be made.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, alleged that platforms such as Instagram were deliberately designed to create addictive user experiences, particularly for young audiences. According to court filings, the plaintiff began using YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine.
During the trial, a therapist who treated the woman testified that prolonged social media exposure contributed to significant mental health challenges, including social phobia and body image issues.
Both companies have rejected the verdict. Meta argued that teen mental health is influenced by multiple factors and cannot be attributed to a single platform. YouTube, meanwhile, maintained that its service is not inherently addictive.
Legal experts expect both companies to appeal the decision, setting the stage for a potentially influential battle over the responsibility of tech platforms in safeguarding young users.
Google is acquiring energy infrastructure company ‘Intersect’ for $4.75 billion (approximately 7 trillion Korean won) to secure the power needed for its AI (artificial intelligence) data centers. The move aims to address the power issue, the biggest hurdle in expanding data centers. Google, which developed the ‘Gemini’ AI, is a so-called ‘AI full-stack’ company equipped with all AI-related technologies and services, including AI chips and cloud (virtual servers). The strategy is to directly manage the energy infrastructure needed to actually operate AI as well.
Reuters reported on the 22nd (local time) that Google is acquiring Intersect for $4.75 billion in cash. Google already holds a minority stake in Intersect, and through this acquisition, it will also secure the gigawatt (GW)-level energy and data center projects that Intersect is developing and constructing. Intersect is expected to be responsible for building Google’s data center power infrastructure in the U.S., based on its technology linking power generation facilities and power grids.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said, “Intersect will enable us to build power infrastructure more quickly and flexibly in line with the increasing demand for AI data centers,” adding, “It will also be an important partner in strengthening America’s energy innovation and technological leadership.”
Bloomberg reported that Intersect’s energy assets currently in operation or under construction in the U.S. amount to $15 billion (approximately 22.2 trillion Korean won).
◇Google increasing energy investments
Google has recently been increasing its investments in the energy sector. Although the company possesses AI chips (TPUs), Gemini, and search and cloud services, stable energy supply is essential to support these businesses.
To this end, Google is also investing in nuclear power technology. In October of last year, it signed a long-term cooperation agreement with small modular reactor (SMR) startup ‘Kairos Power’ to secure up to 500 MW (megawatts) of power. It is noted as the first case among big tech companies to publicly declare securing SMR-based power. Additionally, in August, Google and Kairos Power announced plans to build the next-generation SMR ‘Hermes 2’ in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The goal is to commence operation in 2030.
Google is also restarting previously shut-down nuclear power plants to secure energy. In October, it announced that it will collaborate with ‘NextEra Energy’ to restart the Duane Arnold Nuclear Generating Station in Iowa, which was closed in 2020. The target restart period is between 2028 and 2029.
Google is also investing in renewable energy such as geothermal power. Since 2023, it has been supplying power to data centers through geothermal power generation with ‘Fervo Energy’ in Nevada, U.S.
Google is also actively investing in next-generation energy technologies that are not yet commercialized. In 2022, it made a large-scale investment in ‘TAE Technologies,’ which possesses nuclear fusion technology. Nuclear fusion power generation is a technology that applies the principle of energy creation in the sun, combining atomic nuclei to produce energy. It is called the ‘dream energy’ because it has abundant fuel resources, emits no carbon, and, unlike conventional nuclear power plants, does not produce high-level nuclear waste. However, it is assessed that more time is needed for commercialization due to technical challenges. Recently, TAE Technologies has accelerated the commercialization of fusion energy by merging with Trump Media Group (TMTG).
Tech
“I Lost $1.2 Million To Hackers On One Of My Apps. I Caught One Of The Hackers, And Instead Of Handing Him Over To The Police, I Employed Him To Work For Me.”- BLord
Anambra Born tech entrepreneur and businessman Linus Williams, popularly known as BLord, has shared an unusual story about how he handled a major cyberattack on one of his applications.
According to BLord, he lost $1.2 million to hackers who infiltrated one of his digital platforms. In the course of tracking the incident, he successfully identified one of the individuals involved in the breach.
Rather than handing the suspect over to security agencies, BLord said he made a strategic decision: he employed the hacker.
He explained that the hacker’s skills, though misapplied, were exceptional and could be redirected towards strengthening his company’s cybersecurity systems.
BLord noted that the decision was driven by a desire to turn a negative experience into an opportunity for growth and to better secure his business infrastructure.
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