NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed homemade carbon dioxide on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, raising the possibility that the frigid waterworld could host life.

The new detection by JWST is intriguing because the carbon dioxide does not seem to have been carried by a meteorite or asteroid, and it appears in a geologically young region of the moon called Tara Regio, suggesting the gas may have formed within the moon itself.

  • kadu@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s certainly exciting, but worth keeping in mind that there are indeed many other processes that can generate CO2 without living beings.

    • Ryantific_theory@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I was real excited until seeing the “sign of life”. It’s just like all of the articles saying “Evidence found for the formation of life on Mars!” And then you read it, and they just found signs of water, which is neat, but not that level of headline neat.

      There’s a whole geological carbon cycle that occurs without the presence of life, so all this really does is provide a place for further investigation with the upcoming Europa space missions.

  • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Stupid clickbait headline.

    They found the necessary elements for life, they didn’t find signatures of anything more significant than that.

  • qooqie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oh boy hope they have some gas there 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

    In all honesty, I wonder if it’s just primitive bacteria or not primitive I suppose.

    • Opafi@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Do you have any idea just how absolutely groundbreaking primitive bacteria on other celestial bodies would be?

      • t_jpeg@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Even more groundbreaking if their cell structure and genetic material structure is similar to the bacteria on Earth.

        • Spzi@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Or even if it is comletely different. A second sample of how life can look like would be groundbreaking.

          • t_jpeg@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You right. I was more thinking a seeding hypothesis (life on other planets coming from a single source)

  • margina1Shit@jlai.lu
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    1 year ago

    Co2 can be explained by natural (nonliving) phenomena. Its not something that can be used to deduce life on its own, so hopefully further analysis is encouraged!

  • Knusper@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I enjoy how the search for life in the universe is like, in the whole visible universe, there’s not that many planets that could host life, but have we checked our neighboring planets?

    • Spzi@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      in the whole visible universe, there’s not that many planets that could host life

      Surely depends on what you regard as “not that many”. I’d say their number is huge. It keeps increasing with better detection technology.