In Lands of Ice—Jupiter’s Moon Europa Reveals Earth-Like Continents

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As a close-second to Earth, as our solar system's best candidate for alien life, Jupiter's moon Europa has been the center of conversation for decades. With cold icy shell a stark difference from the warm, live surface of Earth, Europa was thought to perhaps be a different type of host to alien species. However, less than a year after plumes of water vapor were documented erupting from Europa's southern pole, a new study reveals that the frozen surface may be much more Earth-like than thought before.

Publishing their results in this week's issue of the journal Natural Geoscience, researchers at Johns Hopkins University discovered that the ice-covered surface of Europa in fact has moving plates of ice, much like the plate tectonics seen here on Earth that give rise to volcanoes, valleys and even earthquakes.

"From a purely science or geological perspective, this is incredible" co-author Dr. Simon Kattenhorn says. "Earth may not be alone."

"There may be another body out there that has plate tectonics. And not only that, it's ice!"

Though research has been published in the past regarding geological events on Europa pertaining to plate tectonics, the newest study reveals a factor of critical importance towards proving its true presence. By showing that Europa has processes in place for subduction-a way for old crust to be disposed of to make way for new surface formations.

Using high-resolution images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 until 2003, Kattenhorn and his co-author Louise Prokter were able to reconstruct the recent geological history of a 52,000 square-mile swatch of Europa's ice covered surface, something that they say undoubtedly gives strong evidence towards Earth-like movement.

"It was very clear that you could reconstruct the original picture simply by moving plates around" Kattenhorn says. Referring to a large piece that had disappeared off of the reconstructed picture, Kattenhorn says "in this case, the big chunk had actually moved down underneath the adjacent plate and was forever lost, recycled into the interior."

Having proven the surface carries many of the same complexities that our Earth has, the team of researchers hopes that NASA and other international space agencies look to Europa for space exploration projects in our future-a satellite they say may hold the key to alien life.