Jupiter's innermost moon just a pile of rubble
NewScientist.com news service, 26th May 2005

This is a short article derived from a longer article that was published in the journal Science. I chose it because I am very interested in the Jovian planets and their moons.

The article mainly describes Jupiter’s moon, Amalthea, but it also discusses some interesting ideas such as the possibility of moons having voids on the inside. I found this idea particularly interesting because it made me wonder that if there were large cave-like gaps inside the moon and ice available as a water supply then would it be possible to live inside the moon? Provided that you had an energy source (such as nuclear) to provide heat and energy to extract oxygen from water by electrolysis. Its possible that in the future we may want to colonise other planets and moons and I think that living inside a moon would be pretty cool. It also made me wonder if there could already be life there in the form of microorganisms already?

The article is very informative, full of interesting facts and statistics about the moon.
In the article they describe the observation – Amalthea is less dense than water – and then propose a theory as to why this could be – voids on the inside between rocks and ice. I appreciate the way that they have made it clear that it is only a theory and not as yet proven, but give explanations that support the theory. For example they say that the presence of pores is possible given the pressure and the strength of ice, and back this up further by saying that other porous bodies have been spotted recently. They also include the possibility that they could be wrong in their density calculations (I was also surprised at how large the error margin is).

For this reason I like these sorts of articles better than the ones from newspapers. They tend to be more informative, more scientific (rather than political) and better written compared to newspaper articles.

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