NASA/JPL-Caltech
Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is one of the best candidates for finding alien life in our solar system, thanks to a large ocean of liquid water. But detecting any signs of life has so far proved difficult, since that ocean is buried under kilometers of ice.
One solution is to look for life-related molecules brought up to the surface by plumes of water and other geological processes. Researchers thought such molecules wouldn’t hang around, though, as intense radiation hitting Europa, primarily caused Jupiter and its fellow moon Io, would quickly destroy …