Do you think Europa has an ocean under her crust?

Question

The evidence seems to indicate Europa has a 100 mile deep, planet-spanning salt water ocean under (an unknown thickness) her ice crust.

Seems like if we are serious about looking for LIFE out there, we should make Europa the priority, yet it seems Mars is.

Think there's an ocean? If so, what will we find?

Twizard113...
(1) How do we have any idea how cold it is under the crust? and (2) Looking at the extremophiles we've found so far here on Earth, I dont think temeperature much matters as long as it's LIQUID water.

Ken;
I have to agree with you about the ISS and manned moon mission sucking up all the space science money, and although I voted for and still support our President, they are both a bad decision. We should be going manned to Mars ala Robert Zubrin.

Answer 1

We SHOULD make Europa and the other moons of Jupiter a top priority. I am amazed that we aren't. The Bush administration has influenced NASA to concentrate resources on putting a man on the moon again. In doing this, they have had to cancel a planned trip to Europa. If we want to find life on another world, Jupiter's moons should be the number one place.

Answer 2

Most scientist agree that there probably is a deep ocean under several miles of ice on Europa. If we could drill through the ice crust and drop a probe into this ocean, the most likely place to find life is around hot thermal vents like we have here in our oceans. That's because the rest of the ocean is too cold to support life as we know it.

There are several reason we are concentrating on the search for life on Mars rather than on Europa. Mars is much closer to us and some signs of water have been found. On Europa, drilling through miles of ice would be difficult and it would be more expensive to design a probe to look for life there. So we will probably concentrate on Mars for the time being but, hopefully, will try Europa in the future.

Answer 3

properly, the question will not be able to be spoke back with the present volume of techniques we've. Europa has an ecosystem as a rule comprising atmospheric oxygen and an ocean of salted water below its iced floor would galvanize our extraterrestrial suggestions. And why shouldn't it? they're 2 of the incredibly common aspects which sell existence. actual, that it would not acquire a great volume of sunlight, yet it is not something to end us think of extraterrestrial, because of the fact we've prevalent micro organism which matter on chemosynthesis for skill. properly those are the for's for Europan existence. thankfully or regrettably, those are actually not the only aspects which comes to a decision the life of existence. materials exhibit that maximum temperature is around 125K (that's around -148C or -234.4F) which isn't a great information for the Europan existence supporters. To suitable it up, the strain is a million Pa, that's, if i'm not improper, 10e-11 circumstances that of earth's. those would bar our Europan interest... There have been fake starts approximately NASA and ESA missions to mars. whether, I see some desire interior the imminent JEO Probe... it ought to not grant data for Europan existence, whether it effective would provide us some needed specs on the subject of the international. IC(Ice Clipper) undertaking additionally looks interesting... yet initiatives like Cryobot and Hydrobot, which boasts a great sort of ambition would could go through the wrath of modern-day monetary screw-up. HTH

Answer 4

Yes as data from our probes indicates such. It would be quite unique I'm sure. If any life forms existed there they might be similar to the life that propsers around the deep water thermal vents on the Earth. Or they could be something totally different from anything we can think of.

Answer 5

Based on its surface features and the fact that Europa has a magnetic moment, the evidence points toward a positive answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Internal_structure