Aliens of the Deep - crew members

Arthur Lonne Lane

Arthur is a principal scientist at JPL, now in his 38th year with the organization. "Interest started in this about seven years ago," notes Lane. "I was part of the Jupiter mission, both with Voyager and with Galileo. It turns out that ice has unique chemistries on Jupiter's moons; with the volcanoes on the moon Io spewing sulphur out to the other moons, there's a very interesting set of chemical reactions. So I became interested in ice.

"With another scientist at JPL, we started looking at a freshwater lake buried two-and-a-half miles under the ice in Antarctica. In ancient history, we think, it was part of Australia; it had a temperate climate. It was lush. It was green. There were animals. But when it broke apart, the climate changed and Antarctica froze pretty quickly.

"So here's the question: You have a body of water that probably had life going on, frozen over for a long period of time by an icecap, sealed. What's going on down there? Can life exist in this kind of environment? How could you measure anything in this body of water that's been sealed so long-is it sterile? 

"And while we were looking at this lake, we had parallel results from Voyager and Galileo: the missions pointed to a very large ocean under the ice on Europa. Is there a parallel? Could there be life under the ice?

"And then came the realization that life did not require light. One of the paradigms when I went to school was that life had to have light. No. That's wrong. We've proven that."

Lane continues, "So here you have parallels among the deep ocean, a lake in Antarctica, and a moon of Jupiter. What are the common points? How do you explore them?  

"I've been a scientist for almost 40 years, so I'm not going to be around for the Europa exploration. That's another 20 years down the road, perhaps," Lane concludes. "But the last part of my career is about setting in place the concept, the steps by which you get there and testing out these ideas, so that people can easily move forward."