Europa, the fourth largest of Jupiter’s moons, has high odds of being habitable. Past studies suggest that an ocean of liquid water lurks beneath Europa’s 15-mile-thick frozen crust. This extraterrestrial ocean contains salts that prevent water from turning into ice, which makes it ideal for life.
There is evidence of recent geological formations within Europa’s crust, including small, dark, dome-like features called lenticulae. Discovered by the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), lenticulae are thought to form above bodies of saline water half a mile to three miles beneath the surface.
To learn more about lenticulae, the researchers developed numerical simulations using images taken using NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which explored Jupiter and its moons between the 1990s and 2000s. The spacecraft, launched in 1989, spotted lenticulae spattered across Europa’s surface.
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PARIS: A huge ice block has broken off from western Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg in the world and earning the name A-76.
It is the latest in a series of large ice blocks to dislodge in a region acutely vulnerable to climate change, although scientists said in this case it appeared to be part of a natural polar cycle.
Slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, A-76 had been monitored by scientists since May 13 when it began to separate from the Ronne Ice Shelf, according to the US National Ice Center. The iceberg, measuring around 170 kilometres (105 miles) long and 25 kilometres wide, with an area of 4,320 square kilometres is now floating in the Weddell Sea.
Airborne radar reveals groundwater beneath glacier
Melting glaciers and polar ice sheets are among the dominant sources of sea-level rise, yet until now, the water beneath them has remained hidden from airborne ice-penetrating radar.
With the detection of groundwater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in Greenland, researchers have opened the possibility that water can be identified under other glaciers from the air at a continental scale and help improve sea-level rise projections. The presence of water beneath ice sheets is a critical component currently missing from glacial melt scenarios that may greatly impact how quickly seas rise – for example, by enabling big chunks of ice to calve from glaciers vs. stay intact and slowly melt. The findings, published in
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