Aug 25 2000
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
Margaret G. Kivelson and four coauthors from the University of California at Los Angeles published in the journal Science the strongest evidence to date that Jupiter's moon Europa contains a salty, liquid ocean beneath its surface. The team had used data from the Galileo probe's magnetometer to study Europa's magnetic compass, finding that "the presence of a layer of electrically conducting liquid, such as saltwater" best explained the behavior of the moon's magnetic compass. Kivelson explained that the team had inferred that the conductor must be a liquid ocean, since ice is not a good conductor of electricity. However, Torrence V. Johnson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) remarked that the magnetometer data by itself was insufficient to conclude the presence of a liquid ocean. Johnson explained that scientists needed several further steps of inference, such as precise measurements of gravity and altitude, indicating the effects of tides.
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