{"id":355951,"date":"2026-01-06T22:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/355951\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T22:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:43:09","slug":"mission-seeking-life-on-jupiter-ice-moon-likely-to-be-in-vain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/355951\/","title":{"rendered":"Mission seeking life on Jupiter ice moon \u2018likely\u2019 to be in vain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two space probes are whizzing their way to Europa, an icy moon in orbit around Jupiter, to look for signs of habitability or even alien life. <\/p>\n

However, a study suggests their search will be in vain and has quite appropriately poured cold water on the prospect of finding extraterrestrial microbes on the frigid world.<\/p>\n

Europa is understood to have a thin crust of ice on its surface, masking a deep ocean of liquid water underneath containing more water than all the seas and oceans on Earth combined. This makes it one of the likeliest spots in the solar system beyond Earth to host extraterrestrial life.<\/p>\n

The European Space Agency\u2019s probe \u2014 the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer<\/a>, or Juice for short \u2014 launched in 2023 to study three Jovian moons and is due to perform a flyby of Europa in 2032. Nasa\u2019s Europa Clipper<\/a> spacecraft launched in 2024 but is expected to reach Europa first, flying by the moon in 2031.<\/p>\n

For life to exist in the freezing conditions found almost 500 million miles from the sun, Europa would need to have some source of internal heat through volcanic or tectonic activity, perhaps providing some warmth to its ocean via hydrothermal vents similar to those seen across the seafloor on Earth.<\/p>\n

However, a study published in the journal Nature Communications<\/a> has cast doubt on whether this is possible.<\/p>\n

A team from Washington University in St Louis in the United States has analysed the force exerted on Europa by the gravity of Jupiter, to see whether this could cause enough stretching and contraction of the moon to create significant internal heat through friction.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

A Nasa rendering of the surface of Europa, which the authors of the report say is unlikely to be concealing tectonic activity<\/p>\n

NASA\/JPL-CALTECH<\/p>\n

They also examined the moon for any signs of tectonic activity similar to that seen on other moons in the solar system, with active volcanoes visible on Io, another of Jupiter\u2019s moons, and geysers of water spotted on Enceladus, one of Saturn\u2019s moons.<\/p>\n

\u201cEuropa likely has some tidal heating, which is why it\u2019s not completely frozen,\u201d said Paul Byrne, a professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary science. \u201cAnd it may have had a lot more heating in the distant past. But we don\u2019t see any volcanoes shooting out of the ice today like we see on Io, and our calculations suggest that the tides aren\u2019t strong enough to drive any sort of significant geologic activity at the seafloor.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor all of the talk about the ocean itself, there has been little discussion about the seafloor.\u201d<\/p>\n

This would mean that there is unlikely to be tectonic activity \u2014 with colliding plates of rock, active volcanoes or hydrothermal vents \u2014 on the seafloor in Europa, which is thought to lie at a depth of about 60 miles, almost ten times deeper than the deepest parts of the ocean on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we could explore that ocean with a remote-control submarine, we predict we wouldn\u2019t see any new fractures, active volcanoes, or plumes of hot water on the seafloor,\u201d Byrne said. \u201cGeologically, there\u2019s not a lot happening down there. Everything would be quiet \u2026 The energy just doesn\u2019t seem to be there to support life, at least today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 The 50 Nasa projects facing extinction under Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

He is still excited by missions such as Europa Clipper, however, which will be able to take precise measurements of the ice cap and estimate the size and depth of the oceans beneath.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose measurements should answer a lot of questions and give us more certainty,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not upset if we don\u2019t find life on this particular moon. I\u2019m confident that there is life out there somewhere, even if it\u2019s 100 light-years away. That\u2019s why we explore \u2014 to see what\u2019s out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two space probes are whizzing their way to Europa, an icy moon in orbit around Jupiter, to look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-355951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}