Oceans Under Jupiter's Ganymede
Explanation:
The
search for extraterrestrial life
came back into our own
Solar System last week with the
announcement that there may be
liquid oceans under the surface of
Jupiter's moon
Ganymede.
Ganymede now joins
Callisto and
Europa as moons of
Jupiter that may harbor seas of liquid water under
layers of surface ice.
The ocean hypothesis surfaced as an explanation for
Ganymede's unusually strong magnetic field.
Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System,
also has the largest measured
magnetic field of any moon.
Some
exobiologists hypothesize that
life may be able to emerge in such an ocean,
much as it did in the
oceans of ancient Earth.
Above, a frame from a
computer simulation shows what it would look like to
fly over the surface of Ganymede,
as extrapolated from photographs of the
grooved moon taken by the
robot spacecraft Galileo currently orbiting Jupiter.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
