The discovery of seemingly home-grown carbon dioxide suggests Europa's ice-covered ocean could be habitable.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed homemade carbon dioxide on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, raising the possibility that the frigid waterworld could host life.
The new detection by JWST is intriguing because the carbon dioxide does not seem to have been carried by a meteorite or asteroid, and it appears in a geologically young region of the moon called Tara Regio, suggesting the gas may have formed within the moon itself.
Yeah, I was real excited until seeing the "sign of life". It's just like all of the articles saying "Evidence found for the formation of life on Mars!" And then you read it, and they just found signs of water, which is neat, but not that level of headline neat.
There's a whole geological carbon cycle that occurs without the presence of life, so all this really does is provide a place for further investigation with the upcoming Europa space missions.
Co2 can be explained by natural (nonliving) phenomena. Its not something that can be used to deduce life on its own, so hopefully further analysis is encouraged!
I enjoy how the search for life in the universe is like, in the whole visible universe, there's not that many planets that could host life, but have we checked our neighboring planets?