Scientists found evidence of that the subsurface of the ocean in Jupiter’s moon “Europa” has capability of sustaining life. This is very significant discovery in the scientific pursuit of alien life in our Solar System.
Europa is the sixth-closest moon of Jupiter and also the sixth largest in the Solar System. It was first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Scientists have known that it is primarily made by silicate rock and iron with an atmosphere mostly of oxygen. Its surface seemed smooth which made scientists hypothesize that there may be water beneath it.
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research collaborated to analyze the deep currents and wave patterns in Europa that undergo heat and energy movements, which in turn may be able to sustain marine life.
They created a numerical model of the ocean circulation at Europa. They discovered that the warm waves of its ocean near the equator and its subsiding waves in latitudes near the poles, may have possibly caused the chaos terrains. These chaos terrains are the areas where surface ice appears disrupted.
This pattern and the forceful turbulence of the moon’s section may be elevating the occurrences of heat movements in the equator. This in turn triggers the rise of ice pulses which are signature traits of the chaos terrains.
“The processes we are modeling on Europa remind us of processes on Earth,” Krista Soderlund, lead author of the study from the Institute of Geophysics said in a statement. She then compared Europa’s ice patterns to Earth’s Antarctica as both seemed to have undergone the same process.
Aside from discovering the possibility that Europa can sustain life, researchers were also able to know the foundation of its ocean physics. They believe that its oceans are responsible for the ice shell surface of the moon.
The study was published in the Dec. 1 issue of the Nature Geosciences.
