Possible Europa Tectonics Could be Boon for Alien Life : DNews — news.discovery.com

Jupiter’s intriguing moon Europa may have a very Earth-like quality — its thick, icy crust appears to act like Earth’s tectonic plates. And that could be a very positive thing for the little world’s life-giving potential. During studies of photographs taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft that orbited the gas giant from 1995 to 2003, planetary geologists have found it hard to explain why most of the crust was relatively new ice (on average, the icy surface is 40-90 million years old) and yet there was little evidence of old ice that had been crushed up on the surface to make way for the new material.

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