Why Europa May Not Have Life After All

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With huge oceans of liquid water beneath its frozen floor, Europa, considered one of Jupiter’s 4 Galilean moons, represents a few of scientists’ greatest hopes for locating life in our photo voltaic system. Unfortunately, a brand new examine published in Nature Communications is throwing icy chilly water on these hopes.

While there’s no concrete consensus on a listing of stipulations for all times to evolve on different planets, there are at the least a few situations that make it much more doubtless: liquid water and a supply of vitality. Europa has the primary in spades—there’s extra water there than there’s on Earth—however the second has been one thing of a query mark.

On Earth, the solar gives vitality for nearly all life, however deep beneath the ocean lies a self-sustaining ecosystem unbiased of photo voltaic radiation. There, tectonic exercise opens hydrothermal vents that gush warmth and inorganic compounds. Bacteria use these compounds to make vitality, rising in thick mats that in flip present meals for tiny crustaceans and different unique organisms greater up the meals chain. In some ways, it’s like an alien ecosystem right here on Earth, and scientists believed it might exist on Europa as properly. This new examine, nevertheless, suggests in any other case.

Read extra: “Will We Know Alien Life When We See It?”

Using what’s recognized about Europa—its dimension, the gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter, the make-up of its core, and so forth—a crew of scientists led by Paul Byrne of Washington University in St. Louis modeled geological situations on Europa. They concluded that the seafloor is just too quiet for any geological exercise that might maintain life.

“If we could explore that ocean with a remote-control submarine, we predict we wouldn’t see any new fractures, active volcanoes, or plumes of hot water on the seafloor,” Byrne defined in a statement. “Geologically, there’s not a lot happening down there. Everything would be quiet.”

While the closest moon to Jupiter, Io, is a hotbed of geological and volcanic exercise, the extra distant Europa is simply too far for Jupiter’s gravitational tides to roil its subsurface. Additionally, the scientists say, any warmth in Europa’s core has lengthy since dissipated.

“Europa likely has some tidal heating, which is why it’s not completely frozen,” Byrne continued. “And it may have had a lot more heating in the distant past. But we don’t see any volcanoes shooting out of the ice today like we see on Io, and our calculations suggest that the tides aren’t strong enough to drive any sort of significant geologic activity at the seafloor.”

Still, the prospect of a chilly, lifeless Europa hasn’t utterly dashed Byrne’s hopes for locating life elsewhere in our universe. “I’m not upset if we don’t find life on this particular moon,” he mentioned. “I’m confident that there is life out there somewhere, even if it’s 100 light-years away. That’s why we explore—to see what’s out there.”

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Lead picture: NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab-Caltech / SETI Institute

• Jake Currie

  Posted on January 14, 2026

  Jake Currie is a author based mostly in Brooklyn, NY.