Water plumes collected from Jupiter’s moon Europa may bear signs of alien life

Researchers have argued that alien life could be discovered in a tiny grain of ice extracted from ‘key places’ in our solar system. Scientists have long argued that moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter that have vast oceans underneath an icy crust may be serving as home to several alien species. The same can be verified using upcoming powerful telescopes here from Earth. However, to further verify the presence of alien life, experts would need to analyse the water from those bodies.

But this is no easy feat as the water is contained within that icy crust in distant planets and their moons like Europa.

But there is one silver lining: The plumes ejecting out of the icy crust. Scientists have already dispatched spacecraft to pass through these plumes, which would help them conduct experiments.

“For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft,” said lead author Fabian Klenner, from the University of Washington.

“Our results give us more confidence that using upcoming instruments, we will be able to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean-bearing moons,” Klenner added.

Recent studies indicate the potential for detecting signs of alien life in samples collected from these plumes, even if present in minute quantities. The Cassini mission, jointly operated by NASA and other space agencies, previously identified fractures on the southern pole of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, from which plumes of gas and ice grains are released.

Another upcoming mission, the Europa Clipper, scheduled for launch in October, will carry a broader array of instruments than its precursor, which will aid research on Europa.

In the latest research, scientists explored the potential findings from such missions by stimulating a similar experiment here on Earth.

They introduced liquid water into a vacuum, causing it to disperse into droplets. These droplets were then stimulated using a laser, while sensors akin to those on spacecraft were employed.

The findings suggest that instruments designed for future space missions hold the capability to detect cellular material within these plumes, even if present in just one among hundreds of thousands of ice grains.