A new discovery makes the moon Europa less suitable for hosting life
New research has revealed that there is less oxygen on the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, than previously thought, and this may affect what life, if any, may be lurking in the subsurface ocean. Europa is known as the fourth largest moon of Jupiter. Its number is about 90 moons, and it is the sixth closest moon to the planet.\n\nAn unprecedented discovery that may determine the origin of water on Earth.\nThere were much wider estimates, as it was calculated that up to 1,100 km of oxygen is produced per second.\nThe author of the study commented Lead scientist Jami Szalay, a plasma physicist at Princeton University, commented on these results, saying: “They are at the lower end of what we expected.” He added that scientists remain optimistic that Europa could still harbor life in the form of microbes and that oxygen scarcity “is not “Completely uninhabitable.” In contrast to what happens here on Earth, where the photosynthesis process of plants, algae, and cyanobacteria pumps life-sustaining oxygen into the atmosphere, in Europe, “charged particles from space bombard the moon’s icy crust,” causing… The frozen surface releases hydrogen and oxygen molecules, according to scientists. Szalai continued: “The ice crust is like the lungs of Europe. And the surface – the same surface that protects the ocean beneath it from harmful radiation – is, in a sense, breathing.”\nFollow RT on\n
