Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon [Hardcover]

Richard Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0387479368 | ISBN-13: 978-0387479361 | Publication Date: August 19, 2008 | Edition: 1

Jupiter's ice moon Europa is widely regarded as the most likely place to find extraterrestrial life. This book tells the engaging story of Europa, the oceanic moon. It features a large number of stunning images of the ocean moon’s surface, clearly displaying the spectacular crack patterns, extensive rifts and ridges, and refrozen pools of exposed water filled with rafts of displaced ice. Coverage also features firsthand accounts of Galileo’s mission to Jupiter and its moons. The book tells the rough and tumble inside story of a very human enterprise in science that lead to the discovery of a fantastic new world that might well harbor life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the reviews: "Unmasking Europa … brings you face to face with the surface scars of this tiny Jovian moon and tells the story of how our scientific understanding of this enigmatic world has developed. … Through clear descriptions of unfamiliar terms, usefully annotated diagrams, and beautiful colour plates, the story of Europa is made accessible to anyone, even without a prior knowledge of planetary science." (Emily Baldwin, The Observatory, Vol. 129 (1210), June, 2009) "The icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, cut by dramatic faults and other irregularities, caps a hidden ocean about 100 kilometers deep. Greenberg (planetary sciences, Univ. of Arizona) believes the crust is relatively thin … . his explanations of how tides influenced the Europan crust are generally elegant and interesting. The book includes a few Web sites with images of Europa. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, two-year technical program students, and general readers." (B. M. Simonson, Choice, Vol. 46 (8), April, 2009) "The book is a very clear and accessible exposition of the Europa observations, and of how movements of the ice crust could have produced them. … the author is gratified that his ‘thin-ice’ model of Europa is now gaining credence, which may well indicate, as he believes, that correct arguments must ultimately win over the scientific community. … this book can be recommended as a good non-technical synopsis of our present understanding of the satellite … ." (Journal of the British Astronomical Association, April, 2009) "It is written by Richard Greenberg … . His arguments that the thick ice interpretation on Europa is flawed sound convincing … . The new book is stripped of much of the mathematical and geologic terminology used in the original in order to reach a wider audience. … the author is spending more time describing the process of discovery of Europa’s secrets." (Unmanned Spaceflight, October, 2008) "Centauri Dreams readers already know of my admiration for Richard Greenberg’s … Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon(Copernicus). It’s a lively and challenging book, one which Greenberg used to take sharp issue with many of his colleagues, and … when I reviewed the book, the animated back and forth makes for a fascinating look at how planetary science gets done. … Read Unmasking Europa for a close look at the Europan surface as seen through Voyager and Galileo imagery … ." (Centauri Dreams, October, 2009) “This book … recounts the fierce friction between the personalities leading the Galileo mission and publishing their interpretations of what they saw. … the story-telling is first-rate and elegantly explains not just the processes at work on this intriguing little world but also the rivalries and political manoeuvring of Big Science. … Unmasking Europa is a gripping story of the exploration of a new world and the often heated debates within science, and is absolutely stuffed with gorgeous images of strange Europan landscapes.” (Lewis Dartnell, Astrobiological Society of Britain, March, 2009)

Review

"What lies beneath Europa's icy crust? Richard Greenberg has been pondering this question for 30-odd years. His new book, Unmasking Europa, describes his view that Europa's hidden ocean and the life forms it may support are not that far below the surface. A professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Greenberg was one of the first to formulate how tidal forces could shape the geology on Jovian moons. He got the opportunity to test his ideas as a member of the imaging team on NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. During several flybys, Galileo took hundreds of snapshots of the moon Europa, showing a surface covered with dark spots and crisscrossing lines. In his new book, Greenberg walks readers through the Europa photo gallery like a curator in an art museum. He interprets the meaning of these wonderful images and recounts how he and his colleagues came to see Europa's strange features as evidence that the outer crust is a thin layer of ice riding over a deep ocean. This is not the mainstream opinion, however. Most scientists who study Europa believe the ice is much thicker: tens of kilometers as opposed to only a few kilometers. In the course of defending his minority position, Greenberg blames the hierarchical structure of big science projects for creating a politically-motivated "thick ice" cabal that refused to go back on its initial interpretations even when later data seemed to contradict them... With all the evidence in the book for thin ice, why do most planetary scientists continue to support a thick crust interpretation?... Greenberg says that Galileo's team leaders decided prematurely that Europa had thick ice, and afterwards it became politically advantageous to toe that line. A cautious resistance to paradigm shifts is reasonable when a model has been serving well. But the isolated-ocean model for Europa had become the canonical paradigm for all the wrong reasons..."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (August 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387479368
• ISBN-13: 978-0387479361
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Science & Math > Reference

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth more than a few pages, July 13, 2010

By 

R. Trummer "RT" (Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon (Hardcover)

I had just finished the book "Titan Unveiled: Saturn's Mysterious Moon Explored" and really really appreciated its content, quality, and the author's style. So I went for another book about a gas-giant moon - and ended up with Unmasking Europa.

Clearly, the author is carrying around some huge emotional baggage and it comes out literally on every single page. The science is buried in the defensive attitude.
I could not complete this short book - it was too saturated with the author's dissatisfaction with other scientists and the space community. Disappointed.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating science, bad writing, November 24, 2008

By 

gpetrov (NYC, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon (Hardcover)

This was a very frustrating book to read. It has one very good narrative and one very bad.

The first narrative is an elegant and convincing set of arguments for the author's view that Europa has a shell of thin ice riding on a liquid water ocean. For example Greenberg's explanation of tidal forces and the orbital mechanics of the Jovian moons is clear, eloquent and a beautiful piece of science writing.

Unfortunately this book has second narrative that is distracting and frustrating.
Greenberg commits half of his time complaining of being marginalized by his peers, and having to fight to prove his ideas about Europa. However, when he discusses the competing ideas he is so condescending and dismissive that he comes across as a tedious self-righteous whiner.

The book is full of sarcastic use of quotes, idiotic statements like "He is now a Jesuit brother, so he is reasonably credible", and references to other scientists on the team as the "Galileo Regime", the "thick-ice clique", riding on the "thick-ice bandwagon", and adhering to the "party line".

When talking about himself though he points out with satisfaction that his students honored "their thesis advisor" by naming a fracture after him and has the gall to compare himself to Galileo (although he quickly denies that this is what he is doing).

Chapter 14 (Thick vs. Thin), what should have been the climax of the book and the summary of Greenberg's arguments for a thin-ice crust, is completely unreadable and I had to skip most of it or just give up on the book.

I am sure that most lay people (the stated target audience for this book) including me are eager to root for the thin-ice model of Europa, because it makes the possibility of life existing there a lot more likely. Regrettably, Greenberg, by virtue of bad writing and very poor editing does his best to turn everyone away, and I suggest that you should find another book about Europa.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unmasking Europa, Unmasking Big Science, November 25, 2008

By 

Gregory T. Laden (Minneapolis, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon (Hardcover)

Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon by Richard Greenberg is the exploration of one of the more interesting planetary bodies of our solar system ... Europa, a moon of Jupiter, as well as one of the more interesting episodes in the politics of science.

Europa is the sixth moon of Jupiter, and is almost the size of our Moon. But get this: Europa has a thin Oxygen atmosphere, and is covered with water. This makes it a very likely place for life to evolve.

Being so far from the sun, and having a very thin atmosphere (and some other considerations) means that Europa does not receive enough solar energy to be wrmed like the earth is. But, being so close to massive Jupiter, tidal energy does in fact heat the planet up, and the thermodynamics of this tide-powered planet are complex and fascinating. In short, Europa's ocean is probably often liquid but usually covered with ice, but the ice breaks up, water comes flying out, all sorts of complex interesting things happen depending on conditions.

Greenberg's book represents a detailed chronicle of the exploration of Europa by Voyager and Galileo, and provides convincing evidence that his particular model (the semi-liquid, as opposed to the it's always frozen, model) of Eruopa's surface structure is probably right.

The book is well written, in fact, I found it riveting.

Greenberg, however, did not come to the conclusions he came to, or carry out the research he did with NASA without significant cost. He makes the point in Unmasking... that "Big Science" is a very flawed enterprise, and he provides quite a bit of discussion of conflict surrounding the research program.

Frankly, I think this could have been two books: One just on Europa, which would have been quite interesting, and one on the politics of big science. But this is how the author chose to do it, and he was the guy in the trenches...

I also have the sense that the writing of this book may have been a necessary cathartic experience for Geenberg. This sense, assuming that this is not just something I was imagining, makes the book a little more interesting. There are points where you can smell the politics. Also, I've noticed that many non-scientist readers of science books enjoy the personal side of the story, so I suspect this book will be widely enjoyed.

To give you a flavor, here is an excerpt from the publisher's overview of the book:


"The book also provides unique insights into how "big science" gets done today, and it is not always a pretty picture. From his perspective as a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, and a quarter-century-long membership on the Imaging Team for the Galileo space mission, Greenberg describes how personal agendas (including his own) and political maneuvering (in which he received an education by fire) determined a lot about the funding, staffing, and even the direction of research about Europa.

While he is satisfied that his team's work is now, finally, receiving fair consideration and even respect, Greenberg comes away from his decades-long experience feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with the scientific enterprise as a whole because it routinely punishes innovation, risk-taking thought, and a willingness to simply let the evidence lead where it may. In today's scientific culture, with its careerist pressures and peer-reviewed propriety, Greenberg believes, astute scientists (and sadly many of our youngest and brightest scientists) quickly realize that the most rewarding research strategy is to stay within the mainstream--a tendency that by its very nature is at odds with the ideals of scientific investigation and thought."

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