Alien Life :
We all know that water is one of the very important of the few key factors that are responsible to support life. And no other planet is a better example than our own Earth. And no other discovery can excite our astronomers like the ‘finding water in extra-terrestrial’ does.
Alien life on Jupiter’s moons…?
There is a possibility of the ‘dawn of life’ on a planet when it’s perfectly positioned in the “habitable zone” from its parent star which is known as the Goldilocks region where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold to have the liquid-surface water as the parent star will be its heat source.
But there are also chances of finding the proliferation of alien life even beyond the habitable zone where the oceans of water have formed mysteriously. The curiosity to find life beyond planet earth has made the scientists discover some of the most exciting secrets hidden in our Solar System.
Missions like Galileo, Cassini, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2 have confirmed the presence of oceans of water beneath the ice-covered surface of some Moons of Jupiter, and Saturn, increasing the hope of finding the alien life.
Image credits: Flickr
What makes the discovery so fascinating is that the Sun isn’t the source of heat to these oceans but most probably the frictional heat generated due to the tidal flexing (or) the gravitational force of the moons’ planets (or) the heat generated due to the decay of radioactive elements deep inside the moon’s core.
In the late 1970s, Jupiter’s 4th-largest moon, Europa was confirmed of having the water ice from the spectroscopic images taken from the Earth-based telescope. Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper Project Scientist said, “Europa is one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system, I think beneath this icy-surface is a global ocean twice the volume of all of earth’s oceans combined.”
Also read: Antarctica had a Rainforest 90 Million Years Ago…
Between the late 1990s & early 2000s, the images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope may possibly have hinted the scientists about the gases that might have come from plumes erupting from the Europa’s icy surface. According to the observations, Europa’s icy-surface layer is around 10-15 miles(15-25km) thick which is 2-3 times the height of Mt.Everest and the subsurface ocean is about 40-100 miles(60-150km) deep.
The data gathered by the magnetometer onboard the Galileo spacecraft confirmed that the spacecraft did fly through the plumes erupted on Europa while one of the flybys.
Cassini’s mission reported that Saturn’s moon Enceladus is confirmed to have ‘hydrogen’ energy source in its watery oceans which can be a viable energy source for micro-organisms(alien life).
Image credits: Flick
The book ‘Alien Oceans’ by NASA scientist Kevin Peter Hand reveals the evidence including Galileo’s magnetometer data of changing magnetic fields of Europa caused by the charged particles’ flow which is needed to see that there are Oceans of water in our solar system apart from Earth.
Future missions like JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) scheduled for June 2022, NASA’s Europa Clipper scheduled for 2025 to study these possible life-supporting celestial bodies along with alien life like never before.
All this evidence shows that life cannot possibly be on just one planet in the entire universe. Scientist Kevin Peter Hand in his book strongly suggests that the deep search for alien life has to be done beyond our solar system too.
Find out the exciting secrets of ‘Alien Oceans’…
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