'Backbone' of creature discovered on Jupiter's moon

The James Webb super telescope has made a "golden" discovery when closely examining Jupiter's moon Europa, one of the places that NASA is most confident about the possibility of alien life.

According to The Guardian, the latest observations from the world's most powerful space telescope confirm that carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) on Europa's surface originates from its underground ocean.

"This is a big discovery. We don't know yet whether life is actually present, but this new discovery adds to the evidence that Europa's ocean would be a good bet for finding surviving life," said Dr. Christopher Glein from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI - USA).

NASA's Juno spacecraft flies over Jupiter's moon Europa - (Graphic image: NASA)

Europa is one of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, the largest of its dozens of moons, discovered by the scientist Galileo Galilei in the early 17th century.

NASA has long been confident of its habitability, as Jupiter orbiters have repeatedly been hit by water vapor from the subsurface ocean beneath its icy crust — containing the chemical components that represent life.

A mission called Europa Clipper is being prepared by NASA to send a lander carrying a microscopic robot to this "promised land" , diving into the underground ocean to search for alien creatures.

This new discovery adds to that. Solid CO2 has been found on Europa's surface before _. But proving it belongs to an underground ocean is important, because carbon is the "backbone" of life.

Near-infrared observations by James Webb have helped scientists map the CO _{2 distribution on Europa, revealing a high CO 2} concentration point at Tara Regio on this Jupiter moon.

It is an area of ​​1,800 square kilometres ^, with chaotic terrain, with ice cracks and ice ridges, formed when ice masses are pushed from deep below to the surface through geological processes.

In other words, the carbon that makes up CO2 _comes from the underground ocean beneath the ice sheet.

On Earth, the six main elements that form the basis of all life are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen . With the new discovery, the four most important ones - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur - have been identified on Europa.

Professor Andrew Coates, head of planetary science at the Mullard Space Laboratory at University College London (UCL - UK), who was not involved in the research, commented: " To have life, you need liquid water, the right chemistry, an energy source and enough time for life to develop. I think all of those things could be present on Europa" .