According to The Huffington Post and Discovery, Jupiter’s moon Europa may have bodies of water as large as the Great Lakes, showing further proof for the possibility for life on other celestial bodies.
According to the sites, NASA has reported that scientists have been considering that a large ocean existed below the surface of Europa. They have also estimated an ocean larger than all of the oceans on earth put together could exist on the moon. It would seem that their estimations might be correct, since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft have found ice blocks on Europa, suggesting that there could be an interaction between the icy surface of the moon and the water underneath.
Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, told Discovery News that they have been looking at “melt underneath the ice and the fracture and collapse of ice shelves.”
“We come with these large pockets of water that form lakes,” she said to Discovery News. “As they melt they actually break up the ice above it, like what you see on Earth.
Planetary scientist Steve Squyers testified, along with Cornell University, a recent congressional hearing that the moon’s likelihood of having a “deep ocean” beneath the icy surface makes the moon an enormous interest for scientists who are interested in finding if other planets and moons can hold life.
What do you think about Europa having huge oceans? Give you opinions below.
