The carbon dioxide detected on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, comes from an ocean beneath the thick layer of ice, according to data from the James Webb Telescope that boosts hopes that this water could support life.
Scientists believe there is a vast saltwater ocean tens of kilometers beneath Europa’s icy surface, making this moon an ideal candidate for harboring alien life in our solar system.
Despite data from the James Webb Space Telescope, it is difficult to determine whether this hidden ocean contains the chemical elements needed for life to emerge.
On the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, Webb has discovered carbon dioxide that likely originated in the liquid water ocean below. Understanding the chemistry of this ocean can help determine whether it is a good place for life as we know it: https://t.co/tGLrJrVsyl pic.twitter.com/4C4JjZMCBw
– NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) September 21, 2023
Carbon dioxide (CO2), which together with liquid water is one of the fundamental elements of this process, had already been detected on the surface of Europa, without its origin being able to be determined.
For the discovery, two North American teams of researchers used data from the James Webb Space Telescope collected via its infrared observing instrument.
Scientists have succeeded in mapping the surface of the moon Europa, according to two studies published on Thursday in the journal Science.
Breaking space news!
The NASA/ESA/CSA James #Webb Space telescope has detected carbon dioxide on the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
Analysis shows that this carbon likely comes from Europe’s subsurface ocean and was not brought in by other external sources. pic.twitter.com/PlYXj8pCqD
– ESA (@esa) September 21, 2023
The largest amount of CO2 was found in an area 1,800 kilometers wide called Tara Regio.
The first study used information from the James Webb Telescope to determine whether the CO2 could have come from somewhere else, for example from a meteorite.
The conclusion is that carbon “ultimately comes from inland, probably from the moon’s internal ocean,” Samantha Trumbo, a planetary scientist at Cornell University and lead author of the study, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In the Taga Region area, scientists have also discovered the equivalent of table salt, making this area more yellow than the rest of the white plains of Jupiter’s moon, and this element may also have originated from the ocean.
“Now we have CO2, salt: we’re starting to know a little more about the internal chemistry” of Europe, the scientist emphasized.
Using the same data as James Webb, the second study also concludes that “carbon comes from Europe.”
Europa, one of Jupiter’s three icy moons, is the target of two major space missions that will determine whether the mysterious ocean is conducive to the emergence of life.
The European Space Agency’s Juice probe was launched last April and NASA’s Europa Clipper is expected to lift off in October 2024.
It will take eight years to reach Jupiter, the giant of the solar system, and its large moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto), discovered by Galileo in 1610.
Olivier Witasse, science manager of ESA’s Juice project, finds the analyzes from the James Webb telescope “extremely interesting”.
“It allows us to learn more about this ocean, which lies deep beneath the ice and is therefore quite inaccessible in the current state of space exploration”he emphasized to AFP.
The Juice probe will also inspect Ganymede, which also has a subglacial ocean and where carbon has been detected.
These two missions will not be able to directly find extraterrestrial life, but only identify conditions conducive to its appearance, emphasized Olivier Witasse, recalling that in such an extreme environment only primitive life forms, such as bacteria, could are.
Source: DN
