ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997 TAG: 9704100052
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
Astronomers think it's a real ocean, with real, liquid, water.
The Galileo spacecraft has captured images of iceberg-like structures and sheer white patches on Jupiter's moon Europa, providing the strongest evidence yet that an ocean - and perhaps life - lie beneath its frozen surface.
Liquid water is an essential ingredient for life. So the pictures taken by the unmanned Galileo during a Feb. 20 flyby have scientists more eager than ever to delve beneath Europa's icy shell. The pictures are the most detailed Galileo has ever made of Europa.
``These are really mind-blowing pictures,'' said Richard Terrile, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ``There is very strong evidence that there is an ocean here.''
The pictures of icy chunks scattered like pottery shards provide ``the clearest evidence to date there is liquid water and melting close to the surface of Europa,'' said Torrence Johnson, the Galileo project scientist at JPL. But, he cautioned, ``we have no evidence directly bearing on life.''
Michael Carr, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, said the icy blocks, each about 2 to 4 miles across and resembling Arctic icebergs, appeared to have drifted apart. ``You can push them back together to reconstruct the original pattern,'' he said.
The scientists said the water on Europa probably is rich in salt and other dissolved chemicals from millennia of interaction with rocks and was spiked by incoming comets with the organic molecules necessary for life.
LENGTH: Short : 39 linesby CNB