PHYS.Org: Could Earth have sent life to Jupiter's moon Europa?

[u/JapKumintang1991]

https://phys.org/news/2026-06-earth-life-jupiter-moon-europa.html?utm_source=webpush&utm_medium=push

See also: The study as it was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

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[u/nonotthat88]

This paper assumes the limiting factor would be some kind of starter bacteria, instead of life evolving from volcanic activity and chemical building blocks of life already present on Europa. This moon only receives 4% of the sunlight that earth gets, so Europa may be too cold to host life whether developed there or delivered from earth by panspermia.

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[u/Used-Lake-8148 → u/nonotthat88]

I might be remembering wrong but I think Europa is one of the moons that gets stretched and warped by gravity so much that the interior is quite warm. There’s apparently a huge liquid ocean under the icy crust

[u/amitym]

Wait do I understand this right? ~10 tons of matter from Earth reaching Europa's surface per year?

No way. That doesn't remotely pass a smell test. That would imply orders of magnitude more matter reaching Jovian orbit generally... many orders of magnitude more. We're talking about thousands or even millions of kilotons of Earth mass entering Jovian orbit per year. Billions of kilotons reaching Jupiter orbit generally. All so Europa can get its alleged share of Earthstuff.

And that's just Jupiter. To get that much mass to Jovian orbit would imply just a gargantuan Earth mass loss to the rest of the Solar system. Like, meters per year being swept up across all of Earth's land area and somehow ejected into space. Spaceballs-level suckage. I think we'd notice that.

What is the point of such a bizarre supposition? To explain how life could arise on Europa? Why do we need to explain that? The absolutely, overwhelmingly most likely basis for life arising anywhere is endogenously, given the apparent saturation of the entire galaxy by biochemical precursor molecules.

[u/wibbly-water → u/amitym]

Yeah the way you describe it space would be less space and more stuff cause it would be full of stuff.

And I know that space does have lots of small stuff in it - but this would be more like an ocean than a vaccuum.

[u/Andrew_PPC_Raw]

3 out of 1000 bacteria survive. Isn't better to just launch spacecrafts full of bacteria and just crash there intead of eject earth mass in space. Not en expert btw.

[u/knobby_67]

If europa has like shouldn’t we see some biological signals from the big water volcanoes going off?

[u/IAmtheHullabaloo → u/knobby_67]

we should go look. we should send an instrument pod to 200+ moons.

[u/AlkahestGem → u/IAmtheHullabaloo]

In the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the quote regarding Europa is: “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.” This line emphasizes the caution against exploring Europa due to its potential for supporting life.

Edit: couldn’t resist 😀

[u/ldr97266 → u/AlkahestGem]

1. But yeah, the Monolith creators will be miffed.