Europa: Oceans of Life?
			
		
		
		
			Is there life beneath Europa's frozen surface?  Some believe the oceans
found there of carbon-enriched water are the 
best 
chance for life, outside the 
Earth, 
in our 
Solar System. 
Europa, the fourth largest moon of 
Jupiter, was 
recently 
discovered to have a thin oxygen atmosphere 
by scientists using the 
Hubble Space Telescope. Although 
Earth's 
atmospheric abundance of
oxygen is 
indicative of life, astronomers speculate that Europa's oxygen
arises purely from physical processes.  But what an interesting
coincidence!  The above picture was taken by a Voyager spacecraft in 1979, but the 
spacecraft Galileo 
is currently circling 
Jupiter and 
has been 
photographing
Europa. 
The first of these pictures will be released two days from today.
Will 
they show the unexpected?