2024-03-07 05:29:52
Europa is known as the fourth largest of Jupiter’s more than 90 moons, and it is the sixth closest moon to the planet.
Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, and consists of an ice crust estimated to be regarding 10 to 15 miles thick, and a very thin atmosphere, consisting of oxygen.
Jupiter’s moon was one of the most likely places to host life in our solar system, and hopes were raised further last year when a study revealed that Europa contains carbon dioxide on its surface, which on Earth is a byproduct of cell function.
But new research dashed these hopes, as scientists from Princeton University discovered that there is less oxygen on the surface of the moon than previously thought, which is crucial for cells to be able to perform their functions.
NASA scientist Kevin Hand, who was not involved in the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy, said more work is needed to confirm these results, which conflict with previous telescope observations of condensed oxygen in Europa’s ice that indicate a higher concentration of oxygen.
In the new research, scientists relied on data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during a particularly close flyby of Europe in 2022, from a distance of only 353 km.
An American-European team calculated that between 6 and 18 kg of oxygen are produced every second on the surface of Europe. There were much broader estimates, which calculated that up to 1,100 km of oxygen is produced per second.
Lead study author Jami Szalay, a plasma physicist at Princeton University, commented on these results, saying: “It is at the lower end of what we expected.”
He added that scientists remain optimistic that Europa might still harbor life in the form of microbes and that the scarcity of oxygen is “not completely prohibitive” for habitation.
Unlike here on Earth, where the photosynthesis of plants, algae and cyanobacteria pumps life-sustaining oxygen into the atmosphere, on Europe “charged particles from space bombard the moon’s icy crust,” causing the frozen surface to release hydrogen and oxygen molecules. , according to scientists.
“The ice crust is like the lungs of Europe,” Szalay continued. “The surface — the same surface that protects the ocean beneath it from harmful radiation — is, in a sense, breathing.”
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