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Watery Plumes over Europa:


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https://phys.org/news/2018-05-evidence-plumes-jupiter-moon-europa.html

Old NASA spacecraft points to new evidence of watery plumes over Europa

May 14, 2018:

A fresh look at data from a 1997 flyby of Jupiter's moon, Europa, suggests that NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew directly through a watery plume, raising hopes of probing the jets for signs of life around the second planet from Earth.

The revelations Monday came after scientists revisited a puzzling reading from an instrument aboard Galileo, which in 1995 became the first spacecraft to enter the orbit of a gas giant planet.

What they found was the most direct evidence yet of plumes emerging from Europa's frozen surface, researchers reported in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy.



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-evidence-plumes-jupiter-moon-europa.html#jCp

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the paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0450-z

Evidence of a plume on Europa from Galileo magnetic and plasma wave signatures:

 

Abstract: 

The icy surface of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is thought to lie on top of a global ocean1,2,3,4. Signatures in some Hubble Space Telescope images have been associated with putative water plumes rising above Europa’s surface5,6, providing support for the ocean theory. However, all telescopic detections reported were made at the limit of sensitivity of the data5,6,7, thereby calling for a search for plume signatures in in-situ measurements. Here, we report in-situ evidence of a plume on Europa from the magnetic field and plasma wave observations acquired on Galileo’s closest encounter with the moon. During this flyby, which dropped below 400 km altitude, the magnetometer8 recorded an approximately 1,000-kilometre-scale field rotation and a decrease of over 200 nT in field magnitude, and the Plasma Wave Spectrometer9 registered intense localized wave emissions indicative of a brief but substantial increase in plasma density. We show that the location, duration and variations of the magnetic field and plasma wave measurements are consistent with the interaction of Jupiter’s corotating plasma with Europa if a plume with characteristics inferred from Hubble images were erupting from the region of Europa’s thermal anomalies. These results provide strong independent evidence of the presence of plumes at Europa.

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I don't really believe there was really much doubt anyway re Europa having an Ocean of sorts underneath its icy surface, and evidenced by the noticable cracks and changes that appear on occasions.

 

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