Europa: A Possible Source of Extraterrestrial (ET) life?

In our Solar system, the planet Jupiter has 67 moons. Europa is one of those 67 moons. It is the sixth largest moon in the Solar System. It was discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. But what most people do not know was that Europa was possibly discovered by Simon Marius, a German astronomer, around the same time that Galileo discovered it. At that time people thought that it was just an insignificant and tiny dot in the sky, but recent studies suggest that Europa might be a potential harbour for life.

Europa

There is an ocean with liquid water beneath the icy crust! The reason? Tidal flexing which cause the ice to melt into water. What is tidal flexing? Well, it is hard to explain so click here to read an article about it. Anyway, scientists believe that life there could be similar to life found in the deep ocean (that region it also called the Hadalpelagic zone) on Earth.

The internal structure of Europa with Jupiter in the background

Now, if your looking at the labels of this blog post you may be wondering what bullets have got to do with Europa. Well, researchers at University College London  have designed a 19.6 kg bullet that is loaded with scientific equipments such as seismograph to measure tremors and a miniature chemistry lab to study the ice and the water beneath it. This giant missile could smash through the icy crust of Europa. This could be deployed around 2023 and it could answer one of the greatest mysteries in our solar system: Is there life on Europa (and if the answer is yes, whether it likes getting shot at by a giant bullet).

Conclusion: Europa is a very exciting natural satellite (moon) and I love the simplicity the research plan. I think if there is life up there then it would look very familiar to tube worms and other deep sea creatures. For this innovative method and awesomeness at the prospect of finding extraterrestrial life that is so close to our planet, I give this research and Europa a 10/10.

Image credits:

Europa: Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europa-moon.jpg 
The internal structure of Europa with Jupiter in the background:By Kelvinsong (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEuropa_poster.svg