New findings about Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa.

I'm not any kind of expert on the matter but I came across some interesting articles Wednesday, so the short answer is Europa would most likely NEED to have fissures in its crust that reach to any submerged liquid ocean for any chance of molecular life to be fed. Excerpt of interest;

...a new report in the Jan. 27 (year 2000) issue of the journal Nature concludes that Europa does indeed contain plenty of biological fuels, thanks to billions of charged particles that constantly rain down from neighboring Jupiter.
This relentless bombarbment of radiation "should produce organic and oxidant molecules sufficient to fuel a substantial Europan biosphere," writes Christopher Chyba, associate professor (research) of geological and environmental sciences.

According to Chyba, when these ions slam into the icy surface of the moon, chemical reactions are likely to occur, transforming frozen molecules of water and carbon dioxide into new organic compounds such as formaldehyde.
It turns out that one of the most common bacteria on Earth, Hyphomicrobium, survives on formaldehyde as its sole source of carbon, and Chyba believes that similar formaldehyde-feeding microbes could be alive and swimming in Europa's subsurface ocean.

But Chyba notes that the oxidant and organic molecules formed on Europa's frigid surface "are biologically relevant only if they reach the ocean."

Skipping over some key points so visit the article at Science Daily 2000 for the supporting text. This relates to the latest NASA news conference showing Galileo images of areas they believe have fissures that reach a submerged liquid ocean below and call them lakes.

An outline of that press release.

Nature

Science Daily 2008.

reply to post by Illustronic


Thanks for those links very interesting. If Europa has such a dynamic surface as it appears to have what with all the cracks and rifts and fissures and so on; it would be great to see even subtle differences in an a small target area of say chaotic terrain taken at different times, which shows active ice movement. I recall subtle changes in surface detail being photographed on the moon Io with all the active volcanism there.

I've looked through the Galileo images of Europa but couldn't find any comparison images showing ice movement in a given area of Europa's terrain. Do such images exist somewhere do you know?

We have but a small sample size of close observation of Europa, namely the months of Galileo close flybys in 1997 and 1998. But...

a team from the University of Hawai'i, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the U.S. Geological Survey, and STI Inc. may have given us our first glimpse at the chemical composition of that ocean. Using data obtained by the Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) carried by Galileo, Thomas McCord (U. Hawai'i) and his colleagues examined darker regions on the surface and compared the spacecraft data to numerous chemical compounds. Their analysis indicates that the darker areas are most likely composed of deposits of salty minerals such as sulfates and carbonates. McCord and his associates believe that the minerals formed when ocean water erupted onto the surface and then evaporated, leaving behind salty deposits. They hope that further research will allow them to determine the chemical composition of Europa's hidden ocean and assess the likelihood that life could have formed in it.

And...

Europa has a complicated surface. It has brighter and darker regions, is crisscrossed by ridges and troughs, and large pieces of the crust appear to have rotated. The mottled nature of the surface is seen clearly in images of an entire hemisphere. In spite of these variations, however, the surface is made up mostly of water ice. The brownish areas appear to be mixtures of ice and something else. Tom McCord and his colleagues wanted to find out what that something else is.

However...

Close-up views of the surface show even more complexity. Some regions are appropriately called "chaotic terrain," such as the Conamara region shown in the image below. Large chunks of the crust have been disrupted, tilted, and rotated. The appearance resembles icebergs somewhat, leading mission scientists to conclude that the thin crust floated on a layer of water or slush, an underground ocean. Movement of the water in the ocean placed stresses on the solid crust, causing huge pieces to break, move, and possibly sink. It is not known if the ocean exists at present or if the surface features reflect conditions billions of years ago.

More at;
hawaii.edu/Sept98/EuropaSalts

reply to post by Illustronic


Thanks for that, seems we don't really know enough yet. I hope those photo's we have of the europan surface arn't billions of years old, if all the features we see have remained unchanged for all that time then the ice crust must be very thick i imagine.

reply to post by FLaKK


Mission JUNO may shed some light on this situation when it arrives at Jupiter in 2016, Europa is one of it's observational objectives.

reply to post by FLaKK


Estimates of Europa's ice crust are between 50 and 100 miles thick, nearly 4 times the crust of earth, I just wanted to interject that, and of course that estimate is from limited close observation. Apparently NASA seemed to think it was of some importance to have a press release of data gathered over a decade ago this last week you must have heard about. Mission JUNO is a go, it is off and ready to soon activate it's thrusters to head back to earth for a close flyby from the orbital distance of Mars, to get a trajertocial slingshot by coming within 300 miles of earth's surface to shoot it to a nice trajectory to follow and overcome the orbital speed of Jupiter around the sun by also using the gravitational force that Jupiter has accelerating JUNO to over 160,000 miles per hour, making it the fastest man made spacecraft to ever have flown.

We have been to the Jovian system before but mission JUNO has me more excited than nearly any other mission NASA has ever launched, and New Horizons will be approaching Pluto by that time. When New Horizons spacecraft passed Jupiter it afforded the second best images of Europa since we first saw the place from the Voyagers in the 1970's.

This kind of study takes a long time and more money, for no apparent return of investment other than pure scientific discovery and subsequent analysis of such, and Oh yeah, NASA invented Tang, so we have something tangible we can point out, (just kidding).

reply to post by Illustronic


Thankyou again, was just reading up on the NASA's Juno mission, good to see the probe is in top shape!