A new study led by Paul Byrne suggests Europa’s seafloor is likely tectonically quiet and may lack the hydrothermal activity needed to supply sustained nutrients and chemical energy for life. The team combined measurements of Europa’s interior with geological comparisons and thermal models, concluding that internal heat largely dissipated long ago and tidal heating is insufficient to drive persistent seafloor activity. Published in Nature Communications (Dec. 6), the work complicates prospects for life but leaves open other potential energy sources. NASA’s Europa Clipper, launched Oct. 2024, will arrive in 2030 to gather data that can test these predictions.
New Study Finds Europa’s Seafloor Likely Too Geologically Quiet To Power Life
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Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has long been a top target in the search for extraterrestrial life because it hides a global ocean beneath a cracked, ridged ice shell. A new study led by Paul Byrne of Washington University in St. Louis challenges a key hope: that Europa’s seafloor hosts the kind of ongoing geological activity that supplies nutrients and chemical energy to support life.
Study And Methods
The researchers combined precise measurements of Europa’s size and internal composition with models of its rocky core and the gravitational (tidal) forces exerted by Jupiter. Because direct exploration of Europa’s ocean is not yet possible, the team compared Europa’s inferred interior and thermal history with geological processes observed on Earth, Earth’s Moon and other bodies in the solar system to estimate whether hydrothermal activity or seafloor volcanism could persist today.
Key Findings
The paper, published Dec. 6 in Nature Communications and summarized in a press release on Jan. 6, concludes that Europa’s internal heat likely largely escaped billions of years ago. Without sustained internal heating — and lacking the extreme tidal heating that drives Io’s prolific volcanism — Europa’s rocky seafloor is probably tectonically quiet. That reduces the likelihood of persistent hydrothermal vents or active seafloor volcanism that, on Earth, create nutrient-rich environments capable of supporting 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,” Paul Byrne said. “Geologically, there’s not a lot happening down there. Everything would be quiet.”
Implications And Caveats
These findings do not rule out all possibilities for life on Europa. The study addresses sustained seafloor activity as a continuous source of chemical energy, but transient events, localized chemistry, radiolysis in the ice, or surface–ocean exchange could still supply energy or organics. The models rely on current measurements and reasonable assumptions about Europa’s thermal evolution; future observations could refine or revise these conclusions.
Europa Clipper And The Path Forward
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, launched in October 2024, is on a roughly 1.8 billion-mile trajectory that includes gravity-assist flybys and is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in 2030. Over about four years the mission will perform 49 close flybys to map Europa’s ice shell, analyze its surface composition, and search for signs of future exchange between the surface and the ocean. Those data will be critical to testing the new study’s predictions and improving our understanding of whether Europa’s ocean could ever support life.
Studying Europa also helps inform the broader search for habitable worlds: ocean-bearing moons and planets may be common across the galaxy, and determining which internal and external factors make an ocean world habitable is central to astrobiology.
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