Below the thick icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa is a massive, global ocean where the snow floats upwards onto inverted ice peaks and submerged ravines. Bizarre underwater snow is known to occur below ice shelves on Earth, but new research shows that the same is likely true for Jupiter’s moon. In
Mounds of snow-like frazil ice under the Antarctic ice shelf. According to research from UT Austin, Europa’s ice shell could be made of the same stuff. Credit: © Helen Glazer 2015, from the project “Walking in Antarctica” ’s moon Europa is a massive, global ocean where the snow floats upwards onto inverted ice peaks and submerged ravines. Bizarre underwater snow is known to occur below ice shelves on Earth, but new research shows that the same is likely true for Jupiter’s moon.
“When we’re exploring Europa, we’re interested in the salinity and composition of the ocean, because that’s one of the things that will govern its potential habitability or even the type of life that might live there,” said the study’s lead author Natalie Wolfenbarger, a graduate student researcher at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in the UT Jackson School of Geosciences.
Both ways make ice that’s less salty than seawater. When scaled up to the size and age of Europa’s ice shell, Wolfenbarger found that the ice would be even less salty. Moreover, according to her calculations, frazil ice – which keeps only a tiny fraction of the salt in seawater – could be very common on Europa. That could mean its ice shell might be orders of magnitude purer than previous estimates.
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Bizarre Underwater Snow Gives Clues About the Icy Shell of Jupiter’s Moon EuropaBelow the thick icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa is a massive, global ocean where the snow floats upwards onto inverted ice peaks and submerged ravines. Bizarre underwater snow is known to occur below ice shelves on Earth, but new research shows that the same is likely true for Jupiter’s moon. In
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