Sometimes planetary physics is like being in a snowball fight.
Sometimes planetary physics is like being in a snowball fight. Most people, if handed an already-formed snowball, can use their experience and the feel of the ball to guess what kind of snow it is comprised of: packable and fluffy, or wet and icy.
Using nearly the same principles, planetary scientists have been able to study the structure of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon.
Europa is a rocky moon, home to saltwater oceans twice the volume of Earth’s, encased in a shell of ice. Scientists have long thought that Europa may be one of the best places in our solar system to look for nonterrestrial life. The likelihood and nature of that life, though, heavily depend on the thickness of its icy shell, something astronomers have not yet been able to measure.
A team of planetary science experts including Brandon Johnson, an associate professor, and Shigeru Wakita, a research scientist, in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in Purdue University’s College of Science, announced in a new paper published in Science Advances that Europa’s ice shell is at least 20 kilometers thick.
Read more at Purdue University
Image: Brandon Johnson and his team study impact craters around the solar system for clues about planetary bodies’ history and composition. (Credit: Purdue University photo/Rebecca Robinos)
