Europa's ocean may have an Earthlike chemical balance May 17, 2016 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SETI Institute The ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa could have the necessary balance of chemical energy for life, even if the moon lacks volcanic hydrothermal activity, finds a new study. Europa is strongly believed to hide a deep ocean of salty liquid water beneath its icy shell. Whether the Jovian moon has the raw materials and chemical energy in the right proportions to support biology is a topic of intense scientific interest. The answer may hinge on whether Europa has environments where chemicals are matched in the right proportions to power biological processes. Life on Earth exploits such niches. In the new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, compared Europa's potential for producing hydrogen and oxygen with that of Earth, through processes that do not directly involve volcanism. The balance of these two elements is a key indicator of the energy available for life. The study found that the amounts would be comparable in scale; on both worlds, oxygen production is about 10 times higher than hydrogen production. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-europa-ocean-earthlike-chemical.html#jCp
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=436BF709C7A281CB481C2ADA31A6D27E.f03t03 Geophysical controls of chemical disequilibria in Europa† Abstract The ocean in Jupiter's moon Europa may have redox balance similar to Earth's. On Earth, low-temperature hydration of crustal olivine produces substantial hydrogen, comparable to any potential flux from volcanic activity. Here, we compare hydrogen and oxygen production rates of the Earth system with fluxes to Europa's ocean. Even without volcanic hydrothermal activity, water-rock alteration in Europa causes hydrogen fluxes ten times smaller than Earth's. Europa's ocean may have become reducing for a brief epoch, for example after a thermal-orbital resonance ∼2 Gyr after accretion. Estimated oxidant flux to Europa's ocean is comparable to estimated hydrogen fluxes. Europa's ice delivers oxidants to its ocean at the upper end of these estimates if its ice is geologically active, as evidence of geologic activity and subduction implies.
