30.3 Searching for life beyond earth  (Page 3/10)

Jupiter’s moon Europa revealed itself to the Voyager and Galileo missions as an active world whose icy surface apparently conceals an ocean with a depth of tens to perhaps a hundred kilometers. As the moon orbits Jupiter, the planet’s massive gravity creates tides on Europa—just as our own Moon’s gravity creates our ocean tides—and the friction of all that pushing and pulling generates enough heat to keep the water in liquid form ( [link] ). Similar tides act upon other moons if they orbit close to the planet. Scientists now think that six or more of the outer solar system’s icy moons may harbor liquid water oceans for the same reason. Among these, Europa and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, have thus far been of greatest interest to astrobiologists.

Jupiter’s moons.

Europa has probably had an ocean for most or all of its history, but habitability requires more than just liquid water. Life also requires energy, and because sunlight does not penetrate below the kilometers-thick ice crust of Europa, this would have to be chemical energy. One of Europa’s key attributes from an astrobiology perspective is that its ocean is most likely in direct contact with an underlying rocky mantle, and the interaction of water and rocks—especially at high temperatures, as within Earth’s hydrothermal vent systems—yields a reducing chemistry (where molecules tend to give up electrons readily) that is like one half of a chemical battery. To complete the battery and provide energy that could be used by life requires that an oxidizing chemistry (where molecules tend to accept electrons readily) also be available. On Earth, when chemically reducing vent fluids meet oxygen-containing seawater, the energy that becomes available often supports thriving communities of microorganisms and animals on the sea floor, far from the light of the Sun.

The Galileo mission found that Europa’s icy surface does contain an abundance of oxidizing chemicals. This means that availability of energy to support life depends very much on whether the chemistry of the surface and the ocean can mix, despite the kilometers of ice in between. That Europa’s ice crust appears geologically “young” (only tens of millions of years old, on average) and that it is active makes it tantalizing to think that such mixing might indeed occur. Understanding whether and how much exchange occurs between the surface and ocean of Europa will be a key science objective of future missions to Europa, and a major step forward in understanding whether this moon could be a cradle of life.