Spectroscopy
This basic type of spectroscopy measures how much light a chemical substance absorbs by determining the intensity of light as a beam passes through a sample solution.
What is UV-Vis (Ultraviolet-Visible) Spectroscopy?
Scientists believe this moon of Jupiter is the most likely candidate for life because it contains a massive liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust.
What is Europa?
Discovered recently as a distinct species in the Gulf of Mexico, this "new" whale was previously thought to be a subspecies of Bryde’s whale.
What is Rice’s whale?
What is upwelling?
This phenomenon, driven by winds and the Coriolis effect, brings cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths to the ocean surface.
What is the fingerprint region?
In IR spectroscopy, this specific region of the spectrum (typically below 1500 $cm^{-1}$) contains a complex series of absorption bands unique to each compound, much like a human identifier.
Unlike Earth's oceans, which are heated by the sun, Europa’s internal ocean is likely kept warm by this gravitational process caused by Jupiter’s massive pull.
What is tidal heating (or tidal flexing)?
These whales, including the Blue and the Humpback, use fringed plates made of keratin to filter small crustaceans from the water.
What are Baleen whales (Mysticeti)?
What is the thermocline?
This term describes the zone in a body of water where the temperature changes more rapidly with depth than it does in the layers above or below.
What is the Raman Effect?
This effect involves the inelastic scattering of photons, which results in a shift in energy that provides information about vibrational modes in molecules.
What is the Europa Clipper?
This 2024 NASA mission is specifically designed to perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to investigate its habitability.
This biological process allows deep-diving whales to avoid "the bends" by collapsing these organs to prevent nitrogen from entering the bloodstream.
The lungs
What is thermohaline circulation?
This "Great Conveyor Belt" is a large-scale ocean circulation pattern driven by differences in temperature and salt content.
This technique utilizes the magnetic properties of certain atomic nuclei to determine the physical and chemical properties of atoms or the molecules in which they are contained.
What is NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectroscopy?
What are hydrothermal vents?
On moons like Ganymede or Europa, life might cluster around these features on the ocean floor, which provide chemical energy in the absence of sunlight.
This "new" whale species (Rice's whale) is considered one of the most endangered in the world, with an estimated population of fewer than this many individuals.
What is 50? (Accept "less than 100")
What is ocean acidification?
This refers to the pH decrease in the Earth’s oceans, caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
According to the Beer-Lambert Law, absorbance is the product of these three variables.
What are molar absorptivity (extinction coefficient), path length, and concentration?
These dark, linear fractures on Europa’s surface are thought to be "gardened" by radiation, potentially delivering these necessary carbon-based building blocks to the ocean below.
What are organic compounds (or prebiotics)?
This protein, found in high concentrations in the muscles of marine mammals, stores oxygen and gives their meat a very dark, almost black appearance.
myoglobin
These circular ocean currents, created by the Coriolis effect and planetary winds, trap massive amounts of plastic debris, such as in the North Pacific.
gyres