Deutschland begrüßt Europa (2024)

FAQs

Has life been found on Europa? ›

To date, no concrete evidence has been found of life beyond Earth, though there are indications of suitable conditions on some other solar system bodies. Life on Europa would be the first extraterrestrial biology ever conclusively detected.

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will launch in October 2024 and will conduct a detailed survey of Jupiter's icy moon Europa to determine whether there are places below the surface that could support life.

And now, in a study published on Thursday in Nature Astronomy, scientists have reanalyzed the Cassini samples and revealed Enceladus's great chemical diversity—making this small icy moon the top candidate for finding alien life in our own solar system.

So if we replaced our Moon with Europa, it would appear roughly the same size in the sky as our Moon does, but brighter – much, much brighter. Europa's surface is made of water ice and so it reflects 5.5 times the sunlight than our Moon does.

"The question of human exploration at Europa is a very complex one," Szalay said in an email. "The radiation is extremely intense at Europa and estimates suggest an astronaut within a space suit would not be able to survive more than a day on the surface solely due to this intense radiation.

If alien creatures exist elsewhere in our solar system, they're most likely to be found on Europa, one of 16 moons orbiting Jupiter. There is strong evidence that beneath Europa's frozen exterior of ice lies an ocean of liquid water - one of the essential ingredients for all living organisms.

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is one of our Solar System's most Earth-like bodies. Many scientists believe that its chemical make-up is probably similar to Earth's primordial atmosphere with a wide range of organic and inorganic compounds, and liquid hydrocarbon seas and lakes.

Titan's surface is -180°C. According to one exotic theory, long ago, the impact of a meteorite, for example, might have provided enough heat to liquify water for perhaps a few hundred or thousand years. However, it is unlikely that Titan is a site for life today.

Saturn's environment is not conducive to life as we know it. The temperatures, pressures, and materials that characterize this planet are most likely too extreme and volatile for organisms to adapt to.

Either would kill you quickly if you tried. Europa's temperature in the daytime is -225 degrees and drinking something at that temperature would instantly freeze your throat. Titan would do the same as it's temperature is -182.55 °C.

Could we live on Callisto? ›

The likely presence of an ocean within Callisto leaves open the possibility that it could harbor life. However, conditions are thought to be less favorable than on nearby Europa.

But Earth is the only known planet (or moon) to have consistent, stable bodies of liquid water on its surface. In our solar system, Earth orbits around the sun in an area called the habitable zone.

The breakthrough findings from the Webb have now identified CO2 in a region known as Tara Regio on Europa's icy surface, an area also known for its “chaos terrain” due to the disrupted surface ice and indications of material exchange between the ocean and the surface.

Life could flourish in half-frozen slush on Europa and Enceladus, within the subsurface saltwater ocean of Ganymede, underneath the methane and ethane rivers of Titan, and maybe in brines in the deepest craters of the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto.

A single grain of ice ejected from Jupiter's ocean moon Europa, if captured by NASA's forthcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft, could be enough to reveal evidence of alien life, a new experiment suggests.

Jupiter's moon Europa is thought to be one of the most likely abodes for microscopic life in our solar system. The ice-covered world may have liquid water, energy, and organic compounds – all three of the ingredients necessary for life to survive.