Europa is a cool moon. Very cool if you consider that it has an outer core of solid ice a few miles deep. Below the ice there is liquid water. Lots of water… Twice the amount of all of the oceans of earth combined.

Until recently, the main issue for “life on Europa” was that despite oxygen being present on the surface, it was not known how, it at all, it could make its way the oceans below. 

 Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona has looked at  the Geology of the moon and considered different processes which count account for the relatively young surface of  Europa. The proposed outcome is that there should be an abundancy of Oxygen in the subsurface oceans.

The real story is this – if we have liquid water, and it contains oxygen, then life “should” exist. Some would believe that it must exist….but only time will tell. Considering that Nasa have already crashed the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter in 2003 rather than risk the chance of contaminating Europa, it is clear they have been taking the possibility of life on Europa pretty seriously.  Watch this moon…

Jupiters Galiean Moon - Europa