A new project has shown that Jupiter’s moon Europa may hold the key to life in its oceans.
The research team is led by Washington University with participation from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Europa has an enormous amount of water, estimated to be twice that of all the water in Earth’s oceans. The scientists speculate that these oceans could potentially unlock the keys to thermally driven life.
Commenting on the study, Chris German, a WHOI senior scientist and co-author of the study, stated:
“Our study shows that there might not be a lot happening down there, from a geophysical perspective. What our work at WHOI has shown is that so long as Europa’s seafloor has been geologically active in the past. It could still have more than enough capacity to host lower-temperature forms of fluid flow, also well-known on Earth, that could underpin a geothermally-driven food chain.”
Discussing the evolution of the project, German added:
“One of the core components of that new project, inspired by this work, will be an investigation of fluids circulating at lower temperatures beneath the seafloor of an Ocean World like Europa. We will investigate how these fluids continue to release nutrients, synthesize organic molecules, and, perhaps, even host primitive microbial life, just as they do here in Earth’s deep oceans.”
German also discussed the project’s timeline:
“This is an exciting time to be starting the next stage of our investigations. By 2031, when the Europa Clipper begins flybys of that moon, we plan to have much more information available to help interpret the precise measurements of its ice caps and oceans that the spacecraft will make. We plan to be ready.”
Paul Byrne, lead author of the study and an associate professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Washington University, added:
“Europa likely still has some tidal heating, which is why it isn’t completely frozen, and it may have experienced much more heating in the distant past. But we don’t see much evidence of active geology on Europa’s icy surface today. Our calculations suggest that the geological processes operating at the seafloor, considering tides, long-term interior cooling, and mantle convection, aren’t strong enough to drive significant activity right now.”
