Friday, May 25, 2012
APOD 4.8
This is an even more fascinating picture involving water, but this time it is about the water on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Based on the Galileo probe data acquired during its exploration of the Jovian system from 1995 to 2003, Europa possesses a deep, global ocean of liquid water beneath a layer of surface ice. The ice layer plus the ocean underneath could range from 80 to 170 kilometers in depth. Estimating that the average depth is 100 kilometers, Europa would have a condensed ball of water with a radius of 877 kilometers. That's more water than is on Earth! Perhaps Europa is the first place to look for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.
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