The hunt for aliens began decades ago with scientists sending spacecrafts and powerful
telescopes in the space to find out the signs of life on other planets or stars in the galaxy.
However, they have not been able to find a strong evidence to prove the existence of aliens to date.
Now, according to a new study scientists believe that If alien creatures exist elsewhere in our
solar system, they're most likely to be found on Europa, one of 16 moons orbiting Jupiter.
There is strong evidence that beneath Europa's frozen exterior of ice lies an ocean of liquid
water, which is one of the essential ingredients for all living organisms.
But is there really an ocean on Europa? And does it have any life in its icy waters? Join us today
as we are going to talk about a new discovery made by scientists on Jupiter’s icy moon called Europa.
And let’s get started! Europa, or Jupiter II,
is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest
to the planet of all the 80 known moons of Jupiter. Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon,
Europa is primarily made of silicate rock having a water-ice crust and probably an iron–nickel core.
It has a very thin atmosphere, composed primarily of oxygen, and its surface is striated by cracks
and streaks, but craters are relatively few. In addition, according to a research Subterranean
pools of salty water may be commonplace on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and scientists
believe the sites could be promising spots to search for signs of life beyond Earth.
Evidence for the shallow pools, not far beneath the frozen surface of the Jovian moon,
emerged when scientists noticed that giant parallel ridges stretching for hundreds of
miles on Europa were strikingly similar to surface features discovered on the Greenland ice sheet.
According to scientists’ ridge etched into the ice sheet of Greenland provides an unexpected
hint that plentiful pockets of water may be trapped just underneath the surface of Jupiter's
ice-covered moon Europa, one of the solar system's likeliest candidates to host microbial life.
The surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's four main moons, is covered with a 15-mile-thick ice crust,
underneath which scientists believe an ocean swashes. But there might be scientific promises
much closer to the frozen moon's surface, as per a new study that found similarities
between processes shaping the surface of the distant moon and Earth's own icy Greenland.
Europa's ice crust is latticed with so-called double ridges, pairs of long parallel raised
lines with a vale in between, as much as hundreds of miles or kilometers long. Every sector of the
moon's surface is marked with a crisscrossing array of these double ridges, but scientists
have never been quite sure how they form. A recent analysis of satellite images revealed
that a strikingly similar ridge formed in the ice sheet covering Greenland about 10 years ago.
"This is the first time that we've seen a double ridge like this on Earth,"
Riley Culberg, a graduate student at Stanford University and a lead author of the new study.
So, by studying what lies under that Greenland double ridge, Culberg and his colleagues have
theorized that double ridges — both on Earth and on Europa — are formed by underground water
surging up through cracks in the surface ice, then refreezing. If the explanation is correct, it's a
hint that Europa might have more than just a deep hidden ocean; the Jovian moon might also hold
water in pockets just under the ice's surface. Culberg, a geophysicist who primarily studies
the impacts of climate change on Greenland's ice sheet, saw images of Europa's double ridges
and was instantly reminded of a feature he had seen in images of Earth's polar island.
Indeed, when scientists adjust their measurements to account for the differing gravity,
the shape of Greenland's double ridge is strikingly similar to Europa's.
That's helpful because scientists can do something to Greenland which they can't yet do to Europa,
like pierce the ice's veil using radar. And in Greenland,
radar scans showed water that had welled up below the double ridge.
The scientists think that upwelling water is the key to forming double ridges. When a
pool of water forms within the ice, it can start building pressure against the surface above ice.
With enough pressure, the ice might crack, and water can start to flow up into the gap.
That water quickly refreezes, but the pressures from this whole process
carve double ridges into the surface. While It's hard to overstate just how
much of Europa is covered by double ridges, If the proposed explanation is correct,
that would mean pockets of water under the surface have been a feature of Europa for much
of the moon's history. If so, something must be replenishing the water pockets.
Now, this is where Greenland isn't quite as good a comparison, since its double ridge
formed within the past decade. Culberg and his colleagues think that an unusually warm
summer in 2012 melted enough water to pool in an underground pocket under the ridge. But there's
little meltwater to be found on Europa's surface, so Culberg and his colleagues argued that this
new water is coming from even deeper region under the ice, maybe tens of miles or kilometers deep,
where scientists expect to find a worldwide ocean. "It tells us at least that there's a lot
of cycling, maybe, between the subsurface ocean and the near surface," Culberg stated.
Therefore, finding these shallow water pockets could be a quest for future probes to Jupiter's
moon, like NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which is expected to launch in 2024. And excitingly
for scientists like Culberg, Europa Clipper will carry ice-penetrating radar just like the sort of
which researchers used to peer under Greenland. Now, if scientists really find an ocean under
Europa’s icy surface what would it mean? Researchers have stated that Europa’s
geographical location is similar to Greenland, and Life is found in water under the ice in Greenland,
including Shrimp, jellyfish and snails. On the basis of this,
scientists believe that there may be life in the water under the hard surface of the ice in Europa.
During the research about ridges on Europa, Dr. Gregor Steinburg of NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory said that people have been studying these double ridges for more than 20 years. But
for the first time scientists have seen something similar to what happens on Earth. He said that we
are trying to understand what kind of physics and dynamics processes dominate the icy Europa.
So, how are scientists planning to go deep inside Europa’s icy layers and find out the truth?
It has been revealed that NASA engineers have been hard at work designing robotics and rovers
that could explore the icy moon. "It's one of the most promising
locations in our solar system for where we might find other signs of life,"
NASA engineer Andy Klesh told McDonald in 2020. Klesh is currently testing a robot that would
explore where the ice and water meet, which is the most likely spot for life.
"Algae and microbes tend to use photosynthesis and actually anchor on that underside of the ice where
they themselves can be protected from the currents that are around there in the air," said Klesh.
"Certainly there won't be a lot of light [on Europa], but there will still be that anchoring
point for many of the different microbes. Culberg adds that it will be much easier
to find life if missions don't have to go through 30 kilometers of ice to find it.
"Shallow water certainly makes it an easier target if we're trying to look
for it with scientific imaging, or with some kind of access or sampling," he said.
While Klesh's rover is still at least a decade away from being put to work,
there are several other missions to Europa in various stages of planning and development.
NASA is planning to launch the Europa Clipper mission in 2024 to study Europa
and is also planning to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) in collaboration with ESA,
to explore Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, to be launched in the same time frame,
with overlapping observation campaigns. Data from Galileo has previously shown the existence
of a subterranean lake on Europa, with the scientists suspecting many more such lakes
embedded within the ice shell. According to Nasa: "We're really excited that [The Europa Clipper
spacecraft] has an ice-penetrating radar on it, because that's exactly the instrument we
used in Greenland to study this double ridge. And so, there's going to be some exciting data
coming out of the Clipper mission for looking for these kinds of processes,"
Therefore, if we eventually find some form of life at Europa , it may look like microbes,
or maybe something more complex. If it can be demonstrated that life formed independently in
two places around the same star, it would then be reasonable to suspect that life springs up
in the universe fairly easily once the necessary ingredients are present, and that life might be
found throughout our galaxy and the universe. So, if life were found at Europa, how might it
change your view of the cosmos and our place in it? There are countless theories about it!
Share yours with us in the comments below. And this is it for today guys.
What are your thoughts on today’s video? Also don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up,
subscribe to the channel and ring the bell icon for more amazing videos about space.
And thank you for watching