Underwater snow on Earth sheds light on Jupiter’s moon

There is a massive, global ocean where the snow floats onto inverted ice peaks and submerged ravines.

A new study shows that underwater snow can be found on Jupiter's moon, where it could be used to build its ice shell.

“This paper is opening up a whole new batch of possibilities for thinking about ocean worlds and how they work.”

The snow is purer than other types of ice, which could mean that the ice shell is less salty. Mission scientists will use radar to look beneath the ice shell to see if the ocean is hospitable to life.

Scientists can use the new information to make sense of the data because salt trapped in the ice can affect how deep the radar will see into the ice shell.

There is a study in the journal.

Knowing the type of ice that is used to make the shell of the ocean will help to understand it.

One of the things that will govern its potential habitability or even the type of life that might live there is the ocean's composition.

The rocky world is surrounded by a global ocean and a miles-thick ice shell. The ocean closest to the ice is similar to what you would find under an ice shelf.

Water can be frozen under ice shelves, congelation ice and frazil ice. The congelation ice is growing under the ice shelf. Frazil ice is formed when ice in the water floats on the bottom of the ice shelf.

Wolfenbarger found that both ways of making ice would make it less salty when compared to seawater. Frazil ice, which keeps only a tiny fraction of the salt in the water, could be very common on the island. The ice shell could be orders of magnitude purer than previously thought. This affects everything from how strong it is to how hot it gets.

The paper opens up a lot of possibilities for thinking about ocean worlds and how they work, according to a research scientist at NASA who was not involved in the study. How we might prepare for the analysis of the ice is set in motion by this.

Donald Blankenship is a senior research scientist at UTIG and the principal investigator for the ice penetrating radar instrument.

He says that Earth can be used to evaluate the habitability, measure the exchange of impurities between the ice and ocean, and figure out where the water is in the ice.

The research received funding from two organizations.

The UT Austin is located in Austin, Texas.