Europa’s icy shell could also be constituted of pure underwater snow


The shell of Jupiter’s well-known ice moon could also be fashioned, partially, by pure underwater snow that floats up as a substitute of falling down. 

A brand new examine, printed within the August situation of the journal Astrobiology, finds that Europa’s icy crust could be constructed partially by “frazil ice,” a fluffy accumulation of ice crystals that additionally builds up beneath ice sheets on Earth. This frazil ice holds a fraction of the salt present in ice that grows from the ice shelf itself, suggesting that Europa’s ice sheets could also be much less salty than beforehand believed.