Forget Mars-moon Jupiter's is the place to be. Europa is one of the most promising worlds in the solar system for extraterrestrial life searches, owing to the presence of a massive liquid ocean behind a covering of ice. Although Europa is only one-fourth the size of Earth, its ocean might contain twice as much water as all of our planet's seas combined. And where there is water, life has a chance to settle down.
However, detecting any extraterrestrial life that may exist on Europa will be difficult. The moon's ice crust is estimated to be 10 to 15 kilometers thick. Humans have only ever excavated 7.67 miles into the Earth. Researchers detailed their study, "Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter's moon Europa," Nature Communications on Tuesday.
NASA’s Juno mission captured this view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere during the spacecraft’s 39th close flyby of the planet on Jan. 12, 2022. Zooming in on the right portion of the image (Figure B) reveals two more worlds in the same frame: Jupiter’s intriguing moons Io (left) and Europa (right).
Jupiter's Moon Europa May Support Life
According to reports, the ice shell may be significantly more porous than previously imagined. There's a chance that the ice contains numerous pockets of water that may support life.
When scientists found that massive parallel ridges running for hundreds of kilometers on Europa were very similar to surface patterns identified on the Greenland ice sheet, they suspected the shallow pools were not far under the frozen surface of the Jovian moon.
If the huge ice ridges that crisscross Europa evolved in the same manner that they did in Greenland, pockets of subsurface water may be found all across the body, helping to flow chemicals needed for life from the frozen shell down to the salty ocean underneath.
Dustin Schroeder, an associate professor of geophysics at Stanford University, said in a report, "Liquid water near to the surface of the ice shell is a really provocative and promising place to imagine life having a shot."
"The idea that we could find a signature that would suggest a promising pocket of water like this might exist, I think, is very exciting," he added.
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Europa is somewhat smaller than Earth's moon, with a diameter of 2,000 miles. When scans from ground-based telescopes and passing space probes discovered indications of a deep ocean 10 to 15 miles beneath its frozen surface, it became a prominent contender in the hunt for life elsewhere.
The ocean on Europa is predicted to be 40 to 100 miles deep. Therefore, while being one-quarter the breadth of Earth, it might store twice as much water as all of Earth's seas combined.
About Jupiter's Icy Moon
CNet said the Jovian satellite's frozen surface is covered with ice twin ridges that create a shape akin to the letter "M" but continue for hundreds of km. These two ridges rise up to 1,000 feet (305 meters) in height, divided by a half-mile (800 meters) broad valley in the middle.
On the surface of Europa, twin ridge formations are common. Scientists have speculated about what processes may have generated them almost since the Galileo spacecraft first discovered them in the 1990s, speculating on everything from "ice wedges" built up over time to cryovolcanism (similar to regular volcanism, but with water and extreme cold rather than magma and extreme heat).
Culberg is part of a Stanford research group that studies glaciers and other frozen landscapes on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system using radio waves. He claimed he recognized patterns in data from the Greenland Ice Sheet obtained by NASA's Operation IceBridge when he heard a colleague explain the enigma of the twin ridges on Europa.
Giant geysers, which occasionally spray water vapor into space, are also found on Europa. Understanding this world's dominating surface characteristics may also help explain its other mysteries.
When NASA's Europa Clipper mission gets a closer look at the moon than ever before, the idea that water may reside just beneath the surface will be put to the ultimate test. The robotic spacecraft is expected to launch in 2024 and reach Jupiter in 2030.
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