Zeus’s Little Secret, Or Galileo and
Clarke’s Europan Vacation
If you like ice fishing, have I got some news for you! NASA has uncovered a nice little spot where, one day, you might be able to hunker down on the frozen tundra with a six pack and reel in your limit. Sound like fun? You bet! And the scenery ain’t bad, either.
But before you make your travel plans, have a look at this background information and find out why this isn’t your grandfather’s weekend outing.
THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW
Arthur C. Clarke is no Nostradamus. He’s better. While the prophecies of the aforementioned Michel de Notredame are couched in riddle, Clarke has a knack for hitting the nail on the head. He has foreseen many developments in his novels and short stories, many of them shocking in their accuracy. One such prophecy came true in 1996 when the Galileo spacecraft visited Jupiter’s second moon, Europa. The discover that the moon is, in fact, very much like Clarke had expected has since sparked a heated debate and a lot of excitement in the scientific community—excitement that is really beginning to heat up at the beginning of the 21st century.
In 1964, Clarke was approached by the late Stanley Kubrick about story ideas for a science fiction film. The result of their discussion and subsequent pairing, 2001: A Space Odyssey, has become a thing of legend. Without a doubt, 2001 is among the greatest sci-fi stories ever written. The ideas put forth in both the film and the book are amazing. But what’s even more amazing is the accuracy with which Clarke foretold the real-life events that have unfolded over the past few years.
In both versions of the story, something unusual and special takes place on the moons of the outer solar system. In the novel, it’s the Saturnian moon Iapetus that takes center stage. Like many satellites of the outer planets, Iapetus is composed largely of ice. Oddly though, its mostly bright surface features a starkly contrasting dark area. Clarke thought that this area might be a sign of life. To him it represented an alien artifact. There was life orbiting Saturn.
In the film version, it was decided that Jupiter would be a better stop over than Saturn (largely because the art department couldn’t come up with a convincing Saturn, Clarke has said), and so the featured moon became not Iapetus, but the Jovian satellite Europa. One of the four Galilean satellites, so named
