SUMMARY: A new study of Jupiter's moon Europa may help explain how giant ice domes can form on its surface; places which could contain life. The study predicts that impurities in the water, like salt or sulfuric acid, could be the mechanism that allows blobs of ice to be pushed up through the 13 km thick sheet of ice that covers a water ocean. These blobs could contain microbes that lived inside the ocean and they would be much more accessible to a lander than trying to pierce the moon's icy shell.


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