Researchers have been targeting Jupiter’s moon Europa as the one place extraterrestrial life is most likely to evolve outside of Earth due to its abundance of icy cold water and rampant production of oxygen. NASA has made exploration of the moon as a high-priority mission by since 2013, and Monica Grady, a professor of Planetary and Space Science at Liverpool Hope University, has made a wild claim. She believes that the seas beneath the moon’s crust could be host to marine wildlife similar to that of octopuses. Read more for a video and additional information.
In 2019, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered sodium chloride on Europa’s surface and beneath the moon’s frozen seawater exterior lies vast icy depths, the breeding ground for life.
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When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it’s almost a racing certainty that there’s life beneath the ice on Europa. Elsewhere, if there’s going to be life on Mars, it’s going to be under the surface of the planet. There you’re protected from solar radiation. And that means there’s the possibility of ice remaining in the pores of the rocks, which could act as a source of water. If there is something on Mars, it’s likely to be very small-bacteria. But I think we’ve got a better chance of having slightly higher forms of life on Europa, perhaps similar to the intelligence of an octopus,” said Grady.
