2023-09-24 19:12:37
It was expected, the exploration of the Solar SystemSolar system has received a second wind since the commissioning of the James-Webb telescope, which makes it possible to go further than with the HubbleHubble telescope. We see a new example with the publication of two articles in Science which make it known that the JWST seems able to indirectly probe the mysteries of the interior of the global ocean of Europa, the icy moon of JupiterJupiter.
To better understand what the issues are, it is useful to recall that at the beginning of the 1980s, in his famous novel 2010: Odyssey twoArthur Clarke – the famous inventor of the geostationary satellite concept – took seriously the idea that life forms could perhaps exist in the ocean beneath the European ice floe.
As Futura had explained in previous articles, Clarke was only partially reworking his novel from hard SF the results that had just been obtained after the success of the Voyager 1 and 2 missions during their visits to the moons of Jupiter, namely the discovery of the volcanism of Io and the first close-up images of the European ice shelf.
Inspired by those of life forms near hydrothermal ventshydrothermal vents in the abyss during the 1970s, some exobiologists and planetary scientists speculated that similar ones might exist in the Europa Ocean, with volcanismvolcanism originating, as in the case of IoIo, tidal forcestidal forces of the Jupiterian system, heating and kneading the rocky interior of Europa. This may be how life on Earth arose, in the chimney walls of similar hydrothermal vents during the HadeanHadean or early ArchaeanArchaean.
These ideas have only gained more and more weight over the years, to the point that missions to Europe, directly or indirectly, have been decided and are underway, namely Juice and especially Europa Clipper.
Europe and its global ocean are promising for exobiology. To obtain a fairly accurate French translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. English subtitles should then appear. Then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “Subtitles” and finally on “Automatically translate”. Choose “French”. © NASA
What composition for the European ocean?
To advance exobiology, we must clarify the composition of the European ocean. We have every reason to believe that it is salty and we hope to detect biological moleculesmolecules, ideally biosignatures, in the ice and geysersgeysers on the surface of the moon.
The two independent studies published today do not yet bring a revolution but it seems that the JWST observations today strongly suggest that carbon dioxide icecarbon dioxide (CO2), detected for some time already on the sea ice of Europe, called dry icedry ice on Earth, comes from carbon dioxide emissions from within Europe.
Until now, we could not convincingly rule out the possibility that the dry ice was formed from an influx of CO2 following meteorite impacts or was produced at the surface by interactions with fluxes. of mattermatter and cosmic rayscosmic rays coming from the magnetospheremagnetosphere of Jupiter.
In a premier articlethe astronomerastronomer and planetologist Samantha Trumbo from the famous Cornell University where Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman taught, teamed up with the less famous astronomer Mike Brown from Caltech, at the origin of the declassification of PlutoPluto and the hypothesis of the existence of planet 9 with Konstantin Batygin.
Recent dry ice at Tara Regio
The two researchers focused on JWST data showing abundant dry ice in Tara Regio – a region of approximately 1,800 square kilometers exhibiting what geologists on Earth would call chaos and exogeologists chaotic terrain (or terrain of chaos), that is to say more precisely in this case, as on Mars, a planetary surface where areas of ridges, fissures and plains are confused and mixed with each other. In the case of Europe, a famous example is Connemara Chaos.
Tara Regio is necessarily young, otherwise time would have “smoothed and regularized” its surface. If this is indeed the case, we deduce that the accumulation of dry ice is recent and therefore can only have been formed by the massive arrival at the surface of carbon dioxide coming from the European ocean.
However, we do not know if the initial carbon source is biotic or abioticabiotic in the European ocean; it could be organic matter or surface carbonates from this ocean releasing CO2 under the effect of cosmic rays as well. but it is still too early to know. In addition, we know well on Earth that volcanic activity releases carbon dioxide. What is true in all cases is that it now seems established that there is carbon usable by living forms in the European ocean.
A series of general public courses on exobiology begins with this video. Are we alone in the universe ? You may have already asked yourself the question… We can find answers in films, literature or science fiction comics and our imagination is populated by extraterrestrial creatures! But what does science say about this? The AstrobioEducation site invites you to discover exobiology, an interdisciplinary science which aims to study the origin of life and its research elsewhere in the Universe. Through an educational journey divided into 12 stages, researchers from different disciplines will help you understand how science works to answer the fascinating questions of the origins of life and its research elsewhere than on Earth. © French Society of Exobiology
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