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There may be living things on Jupiter’s moon Europa-Information Technology

Saturday, March 26, 2022 12:05 PM (GMT+7)

By finding a way to transport oxygen from the surface to the underground ocean, the US team of scientists may have removed the final barrier to the habitability of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Europa is one of the top targets in the hunt for aliens by NASA and several other space agencies, with signs of oxygen, water, chemicals needed for life, evidence. about the hydrothermal system… in the ocean beneath its ice cover.

The final obstacle is probably the ice crust of this Jupiter moon: estimated by NASA to be up to 15 miles away.

Water and oxygen will be produced when sunlight and charged particles from Jupiter hit Europa’s surface, but it seems unlikely that oxygen can penetrate the ice crust to supply the underground ocean, from which life forms like Earth creatures hardly survive.

Breakthrough: There may be living beings on Jupiter's moon Europa - 1

Cross section of Jupiter’s moon Europa with ice shells and underground ocean – Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Although scientists have considered life forms that do not need oxygen – which exist on Earth in extreme environments – they are all low-wicked organisms. A world with oxygen would lead to the possibility of having flora and fauna as rich as the Earth.

According to Sci-News, a research team led by Dr. Marc Hesse from the University of Texas at Austin has determined that the underground ocean is fully oxygenated.

It was the brine produced during the formation of Europa’s turbulent terrain that carried oxygen into the subterranean sea, following cracks that are quite common in Europa’s complex surface landscape.

The brine has flowed through the underlying ice and transported the oxidants in molten pulses known as spongy waves, which propagated through the ice over a period of 20,000 years. This method allows 86% of the oxygen on the surface to safely “ride the wave” to the underground ocean.

That oxygen is enough to support life in the subterranean seas below, where the hydrothermal system and tidal interactions between Europa and Jupiter, and between Europa and other Jupiter’s moons, are always warm.

As such, this ocean is almost certainly habitable, and most likely has a lot of life on it because calculations show that Europa and many other Jupiter and Saturn moons are “old” enough to long ago gave birth to life, if it had the conditions to support life.

“The study offers a convincing explanation for the oxygen transport on Europa,” said Dr Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper mission to hunt for life on this icy moon.

The study has just been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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