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szypty t1_j4vyh2p wrote

Reply to comment by Feisty-Juan in Deep sea creatures exists on the icy sea of Europa. any thoughts by harvesthealthny

Water is incredibly good at radiation shielding though, and even though ice is slightly worse, it's still great for it. And we're talking potentially dozens of miles of ice here.

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Feisty-Juan t1_j4w1frs wrote

Not at the levels Jupiter is cranking out! You have a microwave right? If you’re in a big bowl of water and in a giant microwave what’s going to happen over billions of years. Jupiter has the deadliest radiation in our solar system. Fact! So you going to try and understand what that means. And then imagine a tiny moon right up Jupiters ass getting blasted relentlessly for all of time.

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McGunnery t1_j4wcwxy wrote

>To reduce typical gamma rays by a factor of a billion, according to the American Nuclear Society, thicknesses of shield need to be about 13.8 feet of water, about 6.6 feet of concrete, or about 1.3 feet of lead.

Citation. Europa's radiation level on the surface is 1800x what the average person would experience on Earth annually, in a day. Radiation level then is = (1800)(365)x the amount a person would receive on Earth. Europa's surface experiences 657,000x the amount of radiation that Earth receives at sea level.

Okay. To reduce the amount of radiation received by a factor 1x10^9 would require 13.8 feet of water. 13.8 feet of water would be more than sufficient to block 657,000x Earth's radiation and get it to liveable levels.

Of course, that's gamma radiation, not decimetric radiation. The radiation from Jupiter is between 3cm and 3m in addition to the gamma radiation. Microwave to infrared ranges. I think a few miles of ice is enough to block this.

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Feisty-Juan t1_j4wevno wrote

I’m not going to disagree with you on this, all I’m saying is Europa is in the most inhospitable position in our solar system. We as humans could never be able to shield ourselves from the radiation to even be able to find a way to investigate Europa. I subscribe to the theory of panspermia and it blocks me from seeing a way life could have existed in the most inhospitable place in our solar system.

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