Paris — Scientists presented further evidence on Monday for water plumes on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, raising the hope of probing the jets for signs of life around the second planet from Earth. Europa’s frozen surface has long been thought to cover a salty ocean about twice the size of our planet’s. Given the suspected abundance of warm, liquid water under its kilometres-thick ice shell, the moon is considered a "top candidate" by US space agency Nasa for life on a Solar System body other than Earth. But sending a robot craft to land on Europa and drill through its surface would be a much more costly and complicated endeavour than, say, flying through a plume of water ejected from the moon’s innards, and measuring its composition. Nasa has reported evidence twice before, from its Hubble Space Telescope, for the existence of water plumes on Europa, though this interpretation has caused much debate. The new data, reported in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, comes f...
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