Europa, one of Jupiter’s many moons, is hiding a secret beneath its icy crust, but humanity is closer than ever to cracking it.

This NASA illustration shows the Galileo spacecraft after it cruised through a plume bursting from Europa (foreground). Jupiter’s in the background. When water vapor is vented into space, the resulting plume becomes ionized. As the plume interacts with the magnetic field, it causes a characteristic “blip” in the magnetic field

Thought to possess a vast subsurface ocean of liquid water, the fourth-largest Jovian moon is a tantalizing place that could have all the right conditions for extraterrestrial life. In fact, NASA is currently designing a devoted mission, called the Europa Clipper, to possibly reveal its habitable potential. But scientists didn’t need a new spacecraft to make this ground-breaking discovery; they studied old data from a spacecraft that was exploring Jupiter in 1997. That’s according to a May 2018 study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Read more

A leaky faucet is a common household water waster. A steady drip at the rate of one drop per second wastes 192 gallons of water in a month! The first step in fixing a leaky faucet is to identify the faucet type. Faucets are divided into two basic types: compression faucets and washerless faucets.

Compression faucets, sometimes called stem faucets, always have two handles, one for hot water and one for cold water. When the handle is turned on, the stem rotates. The threads cause the stem to rise, moving a rubber washer away from the faucet seat and allowing water to flow. Then turning the faucet off, you can sometimes feel the rubber washer being squeezed against the faucet seat to stop the flow of water. Read more

The average American family of four uses 400 gallons of water per day. On average, approximately 70 percent of that water is used indoors, with the bathroom being the largest consumer (a toilet alone can use 27 percent!).

Old showers used to use up to 5 gallons of water per minute. Water-saving shower heads produce about 2 gallons per minute.
The average household’s leaks can account for more than 10,000 gallons of water wasted every year, or the amount of water needed to wash 270 loads of laundry. Read more

Water surrounds us, falling from the sky, rushing down riverbeds, pouring from faucets, and yet many of us have never stopped to ask where it comes from. The answer is a complicated one, stretching way beyond an incoming tide or a cloud heavy with rain and all the way back to the very origins of the universe.

Have you ever wondered exactly where all that water charging down Niagara Falls came from?

Shortly after the big bang, protons, neutrons and electrons swarmed in 10 billion degree heat. Within minutes, hydrogen and then helium, known as the lighter elements, had taken shape from these atomic building blocks in a process called nucleosynthesis. (Lithium had a cameo as well.) The heavier elements didn’t appear until much later, when the lighter elements underwent fusion inside of stars and during supernovas. Over time, stars sent wave after wave of these heavier elements, including oxygen, out into space where they mixed with the lighter elements.

Of course, the formation of hydrogen and oxygen molecules and the subsequent formation of water are two different things. That’s because even when hydrogen and oxygen molecules mix, they still need a spark of energy to form water. The process is a violent one, and so far nobody has found a way to safely create water on Earth. Read more