Europa may be the most promising spot in the solar system for life
● Liquid water beneath surface ice
● Complex organic compounds
● Shielding from ultraviolet light due to ice
● We might expect anaerobic light
Tidal flexing as Europa Jupiter --> tidally heated enough for liquid water
Tides
● Gravitational force decreases with distance
● The difference in the Moon's gravity across Earth stretches Earth into two tidal bulges
Europa has a smooth, young, icy surface over a rocky core
● There's a lot of resurfacing
● Things have hit Europa, but the water has resurfaced and covered up the surface's flaws
● The surface still has ice floes and ridges
Evidence for Subsurface Ocean on Europa
● Fractures and multi-ringed impact structures suggest mobile material below
● Galileo spacecraft found an induced magnetic field
● Europa may have more liquid water than Earth
Still unsure how thick the ice shell of Europa is
Lake Vostok - subglacial antarctic lake around 4 meters down
● 3,500 unique gene sequences in Lake Vostok and microbes and eukaryotic organisims
● Anaerobic life and aerobic life
Autotroph - an organism that produces complex organic compounds (carbs, fats, proteins) from simple
substances present in its surroundings
Photoautotroph - obtains energy from sunlight (photo) but gets carbon from CO2 in the environment
(autotroph)
● Plants, microorganisms that obtain energy through photosynthesis
Chemoautotroph - obtains energy from chemical reactions (chemo) involving inorganic chemicals and
carbon from CO2 in the environment
● Some bacteria, archaea, especially in extreme environments
Enceladus
● Liquid water underneath frozen ice surface.
● Kept warm by gravitational interactions with Saturn
● All necessities for life are there: liquid water, organic material, and a source of heat
Titan
● Heavy N2 and CH4 atmosphere
● Lakes of liquid methane
Enceladus is covered with fresh bright ice. A lot of melting and freezing.
Enceladus
● Volcanically active
● Water and organic compounds - frozen salt water with traces of organic compounds
● Tiger Stripes: where water from the interior is escaping into the surface due to the warmer
spot compared to the rest of the planet
Titan
● Only moon in the solar system with a tick atmosphere
● Air pressure is high enough, and temperature is low enough for methane to exist in liquid
form
● Atmosphere
○ Nitrogen, methane, small amounts of argon and ethane
○ -290 F and 50% and 60% higher pressure than Earth's atmosphere
● Titan's surface is young
○ Methane mud flats
○ Rugged highlanes
○ Gaseous methane in the air --> rain or snow methane
● Titan has abundant hydrocarbons and complex organic compounds
● Atmosphere supports a methane liquid cycle
● Could be a laboratory for prebiotic organic chemistry and show how life is formed around
methane instead of liquid water
NASA Europa "Clipper"
● Will be put into orbit around Jupiter with repeated close flybys of Europa
● Instruments
○ Radar to find thickness of ice shell
○ Spectrometer to find composition of surface
○ Imaging to take pictures of the surface
○ Ion and neutral mass spectrometer to analyze trace atmosphere during flybys
