Further hints that
Europa has liquid water — and possibly life — come from Jupiter's intense gravity.
Not exact matches
In the 1990s the Galileo space probe collected convincing evidence that Jupiter's large moon
Europa has a global ocean of
liquid water beneath its frozen surface.
Enceladus,
Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Triton, Pluto, Eris... they may all
have, or
have had, large oceans of
liquid water trapped beneath a frozen crust.
Schimdt
has found evidence that warm ocean currents and convective forces beneath
Europa's frozen shell can cause large blocks of ice to overturn and melt, bringing vast pockets of
water, sometimes holding as much
liquid as all of the Great Lakes combined, to within several kilometers of the moon's icy surface.
He notes that
Europa may
have three times the amount of
liquid water found on Earth.
Solving the Puzzle The simple assumption was that any pockets of warm,
liquid water would drain downward through the ice and refreeze, but Schmidt
had read enough studies to know that
would not happen on
Europa — the ice below was so thick it was virtually impermeable.
The prime target of NASA's orbiter is Jupiter's moon
Europa, which is thought to
have an ocean of
liquid water beneath its icy shell.
While those calculations suggested
liquid water under
Europa's surface, «they weren't getting the kinds of heat fluxes that
would create these tectonics.
Saturn's moon Enceladus also
has a substantial reservoir of
liquid water, but the U.S. scientific community, in its most recent decadal survey, prioritized studying
Europa, which is nearer.
Europa's ocean, with perhaps twice the
water of Earth's oceans, is believed to
have been
liquid since the moon's formation.
Europa, with its underground ocean of
liquid water,
has risen to one of the top slots on the list of places to search for potential extraterrestrial life.
We
've posted the full video of our Washington, D.C. event exploring the lure of
Europa, the moon of Jupiter with more
liquid water than the Earth.
Europa has long been a high priority for exploration because it holds a salty
liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust.
What Rhoden's team observed in their study was that during this process, several models predict that Charon's orbit around Pluto could
have been highly eccentric, which
would have caused severe tides on both celestial bodies, possibly leading to the formation of underground oceans of
liquid water, similar to those that probably exist inside
Europa.
Depending on the mass of the planets and their distance from the brown dwarf, we should get Io /
Europa analogues or, if it
has enough mass to hold onto an atmosphere, we could get something different: a world that thanks to tidal heating (and infrared radiation) keeps the surface
water liquid.
KAMUELA, Hawaii — With data collected from the mighty W. M. Keck Observatory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) astronomer Mike Brown — known as the Pluto killer for discovering a Kuiper - belt object that led to the demotion of Pluto from planetary status — and Kevin Hand from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
have found the strongest evidence yet that salty
water from the vast
liquid ocean beneath
Europa's frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.
These lakes, that
would be located deep in
Europa's icy crust, could be communicating with the
liquid water ocean below, while providing it with chemical elements from the surface that
would be a valuable energy source to any potential life forms.
Many scientists believe
Europa could be a good place to look for extraterrestrial life because it
has an ocean of
liquid water beneath its icy surface.
A long line of evidence
has shown that
Europa has an underground ocean of
liquid water, which for many scientists constitutes the best place in the Solar System to search for alien life.
An Earth which only the gets visible light part of the spectrum
would probably be warmer than
Europa which only
has interior ocean of
liquid water due tidal heat from it's orbit with Jupiter.