Scientists recently began to believe there may be life on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. They’ve been digging in Barrow Alaska through the ice, and they’ve found life there, despite its -4º temperature. Lake Vostok, which is in the heart of Antarctica, may be their test ground for building a probe that would drill through the ten-mile ice layer on Europa. Lake Vostok is covered by a two-mile thick plate (sheet? layer?) – yeah layer of ice. If they can build a probe that will drill through the ice and sample the water beneath, we may have a shot at discovering whether or not there’s life in the waters of Europa. An alien lake.

You know what fascinates me though? I love Astrophysics and Cosmology and the study of other planets and their surfaces. But not for biology. Who the heck cares if there’s microbes living at the bottom of a Jovian lake? What good is it going to do us? For one thing, we have no way to kill all the microbes that live on our probes, so we may be populating the waters with our own trash. Unless we can keep our shit at absolute zero for a couple of years, then have a way to ensure that killed everything permanently, then furthermore have a way to knock all the dead things off once our probe is en route to Europa… It’s all useless.

My personal opinion is that there is life out there on other planets. Plenty of it. But I highly doubt any of it is what you’d call intelligent. Microbes and bacteria and single-celled organisms are all you’ll find – that’s what I think. And I really don’t think we should be spending gazillions of dollars researching that life out there. I think we need to be researching terrestrial life. You know, these people here? We still have our own problems. We have diseases needing cures, we have hunger and starvation and all other types of ill shit. I think our own life takes priority over finding other life forms that really don’t mean anything.