How could life exist on Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a pair of researchers investigated how Europa’s ice shell could contribute nutrients to Europa’s deep interior ocean. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the processes responsible for forming life as we know it, both on Europa and other worlds beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate how nutrients deposited on Europa’s surface formed by space radiation could make their way to Europa’s ocean through its ice shell. The goal of the study was to ascertain potential biochemical and geological processes for life to potentially exist within Europa’s ocean. In the end, the researchers proposed a new process they dubbed “dripping”, which the researchers describe occurs from changing densities and weakening in the ice shell, enabling surface nutrients to reach the subsurface ocean within 3 million years or less.
“This is a novel idea in planetary science, inspired by a well-understood idea in Earth science,” said Dr. Austin Green, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech and lead author of the study. “Most excitingly, this new idea addresses one of the longstanding habitability problems on Europa and is a good sign for the prospects of extraterrestrial life in its ocean.”
This study comes as a recent study published in Nature Communications proposed that Europa’s ocean floor lacks plate tectonic activity to drive nutrients from Europa’s interior to its ocean like what happens on Earth. Both studies highlight the unique processes that could be occurring on Europa, possibly resulting in life as we know it.
What new insight into the teamwork between Europa’s ice shell and its ocean 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!, Labroots
Featured Illustration Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech