The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) and the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) will co-host a workshop next week at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California to discuss the potential for finding life in the watery plumes spraying up from Jupiter’s moon Europa. The plumes were discovered more than a year ago, and since then these potential windows to the moon’s subsurface have become a principal focus in the search for life beyond Earth.
Europa is thought to be covered by an ice crust several miles thick. In some spots, like the areas of so-called “chaotic terrain,” the crust is so cracked that water seems to be spouting out due to tidal stresses. Speculation began decades ago, when the Galileo spacecraft toured the Jovian system, that the subsurface ocean might be habitable. In fact, Europa may be the only body in the Solar System that has a chance of hosting life more complex than just microbes.
As in intelligent, technological aquatic mammals, perhaps? To read more, click here.