Greenland Ice, Jupiter Moon Share Similar Feature
hubie writes:
Parallel ice ridges, a common feature on Jupiter's moon Europa, are found on Greenland's ice sheet
Parallel ice ridges in Greenland bear a striking resemblance to ridges on Jupiter's ice-encased moon Europa, suggesting the moon's icy shell could be riddled with pockets of water.
This similarity could greatly improve the odds of NASA's Europa Clipper mission detecting potentially habitable environments on the Jovian moon. The spacecraft's ice-penetrating radar instrument REASON (short for Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface) will be ideal for conducting such a search.
"If there are pockets of water under the ridges, we have the right instruments to see them," said Dustin Schroeder, a Stanford University associate professor and coauthor of a new study comparing Greenland's "double ridges" with those of Europa.
[...] "It's exciting, what it would mean if you have plenty of water within the ice shell," said coauthor Gregor Steinbrugge, a former Stanford researcher who is now a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.[...]
Potential life-sustaining nutrients on Europa's surface - perhaps deposited there by another Jupiter moon, volcanic Io - might find their way to the subsurface ocean, he said.
Journal Reference:
Culberg, R., Schroeder, D.M. & Steinbrugge, G. Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter's moon Europa. [open] Nat Commun 13, 2007 (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29458-3
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