europa

could europa, one of jupiters moon, with a subsurface ocean, harbor alien life beneath its icy crust?

discovered on January 8th, 1610, Europa, is the 4th largest one of Jupiter's 95 moons. it is believed that under the icy crust, it holds twice as much water as the Earth's global ocean. 

Evidence of a subsurface ocean:
it is suggested that the moon has a 150km icy crust, with a rocky interior, furthermore the surface itself is mainly made of water ice, and some salts, it also has a lot of ridges and cracks but no craters, this could be because of an subsurface ocean warms the crust causes it to crack. It has been put forward that maybe Europa's thin ice shell is separated from the moon's interior by a water layer, which is prevented from freezing by the tidal heating. Through the Galileo spacecraft images of Europa, we can find evidences for mobile icebergs, this strongly supports the presence of liquid water at the depths of the moon. Not just that, the thing that appalled the scientists was that this ocean housed life-essential chemicals, such as carbon. There is a region, known as the "Tara Region" which has been identified to contain CO2, the disarrayed surface ice indicates material exchange between the ocean and the crust. 

Evidence for alien life:
multiple organic compounds, which are crucial for life, have been found on the surface of Europa as well as hydrothermal activity, which as been detected on the ocean floor. NASA has soon decided to further investigate Europa, till then, there is not much evidence for current alien life. 




there was more to this question but i cant find anything for the other part 🙁 so maybe updating this later on.