Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Jupiter's Moon Europa May Have Fish

National Geographic reports that Jupiter's moon, Europa, may have the necessary conditions for fish-sized life to live in its vast, dark oceans:

In the oceans of a moon hundreds of millions of miles from the sun, something fishy may be alive—right now.

Below its icy crust Jupiter's moon Europa is believed to host a global ocean up to a hundred miles (160 kilometers) deep, with no land to speak of at the surface.

And the extraterrestrial ocean is currently being fed more than a hundred times more oxygen than previous models had suggested, according to provocative new research.

That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.



Read the entire article, Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?, by Victoria Jaggard.

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