Europa May "Nurture" Life

Bullschmidt writes: "This article suggests that Europa may not only have the water to support life, but also heat, generated from the intense tides of the Jovian moon, to not only support, but possibly nurture, life. The article also suggests that the same forces that heat the water may be also responsible for melting the icy crust of Europa, causing its characteristic cracked surface."

Comments

Old theory whose time has come

[Evil Pete]

Recently American Scientist" had an article on possible niches for organisms on Europa. The magazine article is worth reading. Very interesting. It is pretty easy to do the calculation that shows how deep the oceans are on Europa. You can even get an idea of the ice thickness from the heat diffusion for snow, though maybe I fluked that one. Anyway, Europa is the next moon out from Io which is pretty tormented by tidal stress. The surface of Europa is amazingly flat ... like the ice isn't very thick blah blah .. you get the picture.

People have been theorising about this for about 20 years, Clarke didn't invent the "life on Europa" thing he was just astute enough to see a winning theory. I remember at the time I was surprised so few supported it ... it seemed a very likely possibility. Then when hydrothermal vents were discovered it didn't take long for people to put the two ideas together.

Actually, the likely pressure at the bottom of the ocean on Europa is likely to be similar to that at the deepest parts of the Earth's oceans. But no-one knows. Can't wait for a probe to do some searching ... even just the ice on the surface near the cracks should have heaps of biological stuff if there is life there. Also, its probably the easiest place we could colonise. I mean the temp is over 0 C and the upper layers should be ok for scuba ... and a few subs ... hmmmmmmmmm

Pete