Evidence of Bacterial Life on Europa

AaronW writes: "According to this article at newscientist.com, the rosy color of Europa may be caused by bacteria. Apparently the previously unexplained infra-red signature matches that of extremophile bacteria found here on Earth."

Comments

Eh...

[global_diffusion]

It's New Scientist. It sounds nice and could be a valid theory, but until we have more detail we won't know. This is what everyone wants to hear about Europa (because of it's oceans), but that doesn't mean that this is more than a guess.

We'll hear more cuz Astrobiology is a growin field

[VTdude]

One of the big reasons we're hearing more of this is that since the fossil bacteria mars meteor find there has been a lot more focus on Astrobiology. NASA Ames has a Astrobiology Academy that is sort of a Space Camp for the 18 to 25 year old crowd that grew up wanting to go to Space Camp (that's us).
There are also a lot of Collegiate program's like Penn State's and some new peer reviewed astrobiology journals.
Sort of a case of we find what we look for. Makes you wonder what the SETI people could do with more funding.

Re:Sulphur Vents - Enough Internal heat

[boldra]

Don't forget Io - there's plenty of internal heat there!

Io's surface is molten rock with continuous active volcanos. There is so much geological activity on Io, it's almost impossible to spot craters from foreign bodies. Io's too small to have stored the heat itself, it gets it from the tidal pull of Jupiter's gravity continuously deforming its shape.

Europa is the next closest moon after Io (about 150% the distance from Jupiter), and has liess mass (roughly 50%) - so it should have less tidal disruption. However, observations from Gallileo have shown that the surface of Europa is changing quite rapidly (APOD pic of Europa changing), so there is almost certainly some internal heat there. Europa is almost certainly the best candidate for life in our solar system.