The Science of Battlestar Galactica by Di Justo Patrick & Grazier Kevin

Author:Di Justo, Patrick & Grazier, Kevin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

Satellites

Name: Ice Moon

Type: Ice Moon

According to Colonel Tigh, most planets are just “hunks of rock or balls of gas.” But once you locate one of those planets—particularly the balls of gas kind—its moons are likely to be composed largely of ice, just like the one Boomer and Crashdown found at the end of “Water.” Icy moons are not rare—at least not in our solar system—and it’s reasonable to assume that icy moons, asteroids, and comets should be common in many types of planetary systems.

Of the nearly five hundred extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, discovered to date, most have been Jovian: Jupiter-like gas planets. Many of these orbit their parent star in extremely tight orbits, and are known as “hot Jupiters.” In Galactica’s desperate search for accessible water, these types of planets would be the easiest types of planets to detect from a distance, but could also be instantly ruled out—they’re located too close to their central stars for water to be in a solid state.

Though there are traces of ice on our own moon, the true ice moons in our solar system are found in the dim frigid realm of Sol’s Jovian planets. We’re therefore more likely to find similar icy moons in the middle to outer reaches of other planetary systems. There ices can condense around the solid body of a small moon. This further underscores an important point: what you call a “rock” depends upon where you are in the solar system. In the outer reaches of a planetary system, water ice is a naturally occurring crystalline substance, and is considered a rock by planetary scientists.

The three most well-known icy moons in our solar system are probably Europa, Enceladus, and Triton. Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s four Galilean satellites, was a shock to scientists when they first saw it close up during the Voyager flybys in 1979. Instead of a rocky, cratered moon, the probes sent back images of a smooth, cracked world of ice. Subsequent space probes have helped us to determine that Europa almost certainly has a small iron core, a rocky mantle, and a subsurface ocean of liquid water, capped by a crunchy frosted shell.

The problem with such ice, from a Colonial Fleet standpoint, is that it almost never is pure H2O. Water on an icy moon in the far reaches of a planetary system, or orbiting a Jovian planet (or both), will almost certainly contain volatile contaminants such as ammonia, methane, or even other hydrocarbons like ethane. Fortunately, chances are that Galactica’s water purifiers will know how to remove methane and ammonia from the water. Small amounts of ammonia in the body are caused by normal protein breakdown. This ammonia is usually broken down into urea by the liver. People with liver problems, such as heavy drinkers, generally produce more ammonia in their urine than people with healthy livers. (Colonel Tigh, we’re looking at you.) Then again, who knows if Cylon livers work the same way. Since the Cylons have made improvements on the basic

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