Possible lakes on Europa could support life

Washington Post : Not only does Jupiter’s smallest moon, Europa, have a massive global ocean beneath its icy surface, but it could also have huge lakes, according to new research. One of the geological mysteries of the solar system, writes Brian Vastag for the Washington Post, has been the number of icebergs strewn across the surface of Europa. Now researchers have found that they are probably the tips of subsurface lakes that well up and warm the surface. That is good news for scientists hoping to find signs of life on Europa because it means that there could be channels through the ice for life forms to travel between the surface and the ocean. If such subsurface lakes exist on Europa, they would hold more water than all five Great Lakes, said Britney Schmidt from the University of Texas at Austin and a coauthor of a recent paper published in Nature. It may be a while, however, before funding for another probe to Europa comes through, since much of the US space budget is being earmarked for the James Webb Space Telescope.