{"id":698581,"date":"2026-06-11T22:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/698581\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T22:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:58:11","slug":"evidence-for-water-vapor-plumes-on-europa-vanishes-in-re-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/698581\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence For Water Vapor Plumes On Europa Vanishes In Re-Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlike on Mars where for decades we have had dozens of orbital and ground-based platforms zipping and scurrying about to prod at every bit of emitted radiation, rock type and twitch of dust devils in its thin atmosphere, for other planets and their moons we have to do a lot more speculative interpretation of data. Such was the case with the presumed existence of water plumes on Jupiter\u2019s moon Europa. These now appear to have been a statistical fluke<\/a>, per research by [L. Roth] et al. in\u00a0Astronomy & Astrophysics.<\/p>\n

As succinctly summarized<\/a> in the article on this by [Javier Barbuzano] of\u00a0Sky and Telescope, the original 2013 finding of said water plumes by the same team was based on faint UV emissions from Europa\u2019s southern hemisphere as captured by the\u00a0Hubble Space Telescope. However, in more recent captures these emissions were not detected again, leading them to reexamine their original analysis of the 2013 data.<\/p>\n

One of the main flaws was in the assumption of where Europe was located on Hubble\u2019s 1,000 x 1,000 resolution detector, with the re-analysis showing that they were off by a couple of pixels. A second flaw was quite understandable as since 2013 we have learned that Europa has a thin hydrogen exosphere<\/a> which interacts with the Sun\u2019s UV radiation. The resulting scattering induces a UV glow which could be mistaken for UV radiation emanating from the moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

Even with this one intriguing feature turning out to be a mirage, it doesn\u2019t make Europa any less interesting as it\u2019s still assumed to have vast liquid water oceans. Along with Uranus\u2019 moon Miranda<\/a> this makes it very worth it to experience more of the sights and sounds<\/a> of these alien worlds, whether in person or via our robotic friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike on Mars where for decades we have had dozens of orbital and ground-based platforms zipping and scurrying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-698581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}