Could extraterrestrial life have been hiding on Europa all along?
"Because it's closer to the surface, where you get interesting chemicals from space, other moons, and the volcanoes of Io, there's a possibility that life has a shot if there are pockets of water in the shell," the study's senior authorSchool of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, explained in a press statement shared withAn artist's depiction of how shallow bodies of water might form under double ridges, on Europa.
"If the mechanism we see in Greenland is how these things happen on Europa, it suggests there's water everywhere," Schroeder continued. Since formations on the icy moon are so similar to those seen on the surface of Greenland's ice sheet, the scientists suspect they lend greater insight into the conditions on the Jovian moon.
This complex surface structure would be much more conducive to life than previous theories would suggest.
"In Greenland, this double ridge formed in a place where water from surface lakes and streams frequently drains into the near-surface and refreezes," said Culberg, in the release."One way that similar shallow water pockets could form on Europa might be through water from the subsurface ocean being forced up into the ice shell through fractures — and that would suggest there could be a reasonable amount of exchange happening inside of the ice shell.
The researchers believe these dynamic surface processes support the theory of habitable conditions on Europa as they facilitate the exchange of nutrients between the subsurface ocean and the neighboring moons. By 2030, NASA's
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