Europa moment: Jupiter moon capable of sustaining life
The uncanny resemblance between features on Europa’s frozen surface and a landform in Greenland that sits atop a sizable pocket of water are providing intriguing new indications that this moon of Jupiter may be capable of harbouring life.
A study published on Tuesday explored similarities between elongated landforms called double ridges that look like huge gashes across Europa’s surface and a smaller version in Greenland examined using ice-penetrating radar.
Double ridges are linear, with two peaks and a central trough between them.
“If you sliced through one and looked at the cross section,
it would look a bit like the capital letter ‘M’,” said Stanford University
geophysicist Riley Culberg, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Radar data showed that refreezing of liquid subsurface water drove the formation of Greenland’s double ridge. If Europa’s features form the same way, this could signal the presence of copious amounts of liquid water - a key ingredient for life - near the surface of this Jovian moon’s thick outer ice shell.
In the search for extraterrestrial life, Europa has attracted attention as one of the locales in our solar system that may be habitable, perhaps by microbes, owing to a global saltwater ocean detected deep beneath its ice shell. Innumerable water pockets closer to the surface would represent a second potential habitat for organisms.
“The presence of liquid water in the ice shell would suggest that exchange between the ocean and ice shell is common, which could be important for chemical cycling that would help support life,” Culberg said.
“Shallow water in particular also means there might be easier targets for future space missions to image or sample that could at least preserve evidence of life without having to fully access the deep ocean.”
Nasa’s robotic Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled for a 2024 launch to further investigate whether this moon possesses conditions suitable for life.