Europa can count another similarity with Earth as Jupiter's moon apparently has icy plate tectonics, a characteristic that would be exclusive to Europa and Earth.
According to Space.com, a new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, has shown evidence of icy plate tectonics beneath Europa's surface. Already observed spouting water vapor from geysers, Europa is a leading candidate for celestial bodies that could host alien life.
For their study, Simon Kattenhorn, of the University of Idaho, and Louise Prokter, of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, examined images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.
"From a purely science or geological perspective, this is incredible," Kattenhorn told Space.com. "Earth may not be alone. There may be another body out there that has plate tectonics. And not only that, it's ice."
He said he hopes the discovery will cause NASA to avert more attention to Europa, especially given the previous revelations made in regards to Jupiter's moon.
"The surface of Europa is covered in ancient geological features which [we think] are older than the subduction zones and plate boundaries we identified," Kattenhorn told ABC Science. "We were able to reconstruct the original pattern of these features like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, matching the geology patterns. You could see that rigid portions of the surface had been rearranged like tectonic plates.
"We think one plate of ice sank beneath the other into warmer ice layers below at this boundary, just like subduction zones on Earth."
Now the researchers will need to go further to understand exactly how Europa's plate tectonic mechanism works. They suggested Europa's subsurface oceans do not freeze due to tidal heating from Jupiter's massive gravitational force.
"As with all convection, what goes up must go down as well," Kattenhorn told Space.com. "One can imagine that some of that material may ultimately, just by virtue of being in a convective system, work its way downward. Whether that ultimately comes into contact with the ocean is an important question."
