What processes on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, could offer clues about the small moon potentially harboring life as we know it? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) investigated potential sources of frozen hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on the leading hemisphere of Europa’s surface.
What makes this even more intriguing is the frozen H2O2 exists in warmer regions of the surface and not in polar regions, most notably chaos terrain, which contradicts longstanding models and recent observations obtained from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This study has the potential to help scientists better understand Europa’s chemical processes and what this could mean for finding life on Europa’s surface or within its subsurface ocean.
For the study, the researchers conducted a series of laboratory experiments to simulate the production of frozen H2O2 within the aforementioned chaos terrain, the latter of which is geologically deformed surface material hypothesized to be created from liquid water emerging from the subsurface ocean. In the end, the researchers found that the frozen H2O2 showed increased amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), which could explain the increased production of frozen H2O2, thus matching recent JWST observations.
“When you have a source of carbon from the interior, such as from an interior ocean like on Europa, and you combine it with energy coming from the magnetosphere, it produces new species on the surface, including hydrogen peroxide and other organic compounds, that store chemical energy,” said Dr. Ben Teolis, who is a SwRI planetary scientist and a co-author on the study. “Chemical energy is important because it is a necessary ingredient for the dark habitable ocean worlds where the sun doesn’t shine.”
What new discoveries about Europa’s chemical processes will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Planetary Science Journal, EurekAlert!
Featured Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill