There are double ridges on the surface of Jupiter's ice moon.
The ridges can be created by pockets of liquid water contained within the ice itself, according to an analysis of a similar feature on the Greenland ice sheet.
This finding gives us new insight into the processes that shape the frozen world. It suggests that extraterrestrial life may be closer to the moon than it is to the ocean below the ice.
There is a chance that life has a chance if there are pockets of water in the shell.
If the mechanism we see in Greenland is how these things happen, it suggests there is water everywhere.
The largest planet in the Solar System is shrouded in mystery. Evidence suggests that the body is not completely frozen, but has a briny ocean beneath its thick shell of ice.
It has been found to be the best place in the Solar System to look for extraterrestrial life, clustered around volcanic ocean-floor vents like those here on Earth.
We do not know much about the moon. Its surface is scored with double ridges, which run along either side of long troughs. The form was first discovered in images taken by the Galileo probe in the 1990s.
3D reconstruction of a double ridge from Galileo imagery.
It is often happenstance that gives us an answer in science.
The double ridges were strangely familiar to the researchers who attended the presentation.
They looked like giant versions of ridges they had seen on the glacier.
People have been studying these double ridges for over 20 years, but this is the first time they have been able to see nature work out its magic.
We are making a much bigger step into the direction of understanding what processes actually dominate the physics and the dynamics of the ice shell.
The features on the Greenland ridges were the same as those on Europa. The team wanted to find out how the ridges formed.
They studied the data collected by NASA's IceBridge, which uses radar technology to see what's happening beneath the ice. The ridges had not formed until after the team had started their data.
The data showed that the ridges formed when a pocket of pressurized water refreezing inside the ice sheet caused the ice sheet to break. The double-peaked M shaped-feature in the ice was produced by this process, and it is possible that similar processes have been taking place on Europa.
Culberg explained that this double ridge formed in a place where water from surface lakes and streams frequently drain into the near-surface and refreezes.
One way that similar shallow water pockets could form on Europa could be through water from the ocean being forced up into the ice shell through the cracks.
It suggests that shallow water may be ubiquitous across the surface of the moon, in time as well as space, and that liquid water has been pervasive within the shell of ice that wraps around the moon.
This could have implications for searching for life on the alien world, but we won't know more until we can compare the data from the radar-equipped spacecraft. Two missions to explore the moon are about to launch, one carrying ice-penetrating radar and the other carrying a camera.
They should tell us more about what causes the strange, double-ridged gouges on the moon.
Culberg said that their hypothesis has some observations from the formation of a similar feature on Earth to back it up.
The research has been published.
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