NASA Finds More Evidence of Water Plumes on Jupiter’s Moon Europa
Last week, NASA announced its scientists had found “surprising activity” on Jupiter’s moon Europa. And, just like you’d expect, the space-dork corner of the Internet whipped itself into a frenzy. Because that kind of vague statement can only mean they found aliens, right? Well, not really. But some people are still convinced, even after NASA tried to walk back its blatant nerd-baiting by tweeting that it was definitely not aliens.
We’re here to set the record straight. While NASA didn’t find anything gangly, gray, and bug-eyed on Europa this time, what they did discover is still important. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists caught sight of water plumes bursting out from Europa’s icy surface. If any Europeans are lurking beneath the moon’s surface, they just got a whole lot easier to reach.
The excitement over “activity” on Europa makes sense. In this solar system, having any kind of liquid ocean makes you a member of a pretty exclusive club. As far as we know, the only ocean worlds we’ve got are Earth (duh), Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede, Saturn’s moons Titan and Encedalus, and Europa. Those moons are where scientists think they’re most likely to find extraterrestrial life in our solar system, if there’s any to find. Europa doesn’t have liquid on its surface like Earth or Titan, but beneath its icy crust is a sizable, H2O ocean situation happening. And we mean big—it covers the whole moon. So as an incubator for life, it’s looking a lot better than Titan’s super-chilled methane lakes.
