<story><title>Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter’s moon Europa</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29458-3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>The interesting question is that since water is such a fantastic medium for earth-based life, how can we make sure that any probe sent from here to say, sample the water on Europa won&amp;#x27;t contaminate it. It&amp;#x27;s my understanding that even though all planetary landers are sanitized it&amp;#x27;s almost impossible to make sure no life survives on them. Which I guess isn&amp;#x27;t too much of an issue on the moon or Mars, but any microbes would have much better chances of surviving in the water environment of Europa.</text></item><item><author>thinkingkong</author><text>The implication is that there’s liquid water right under the surface if Europa. That would be fairly exciting if confirmed. Im not sure theres a single place on earth with water but not without life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>twic</author><text>This is the job of the space agencies&amp;#x27; planetary protection officers:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sma.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;sma-disciplines&amp;#x2F;planetary-protection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sma.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;sma-disciplines&amp;#x2F;planetary-protection&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.esa.int&amp;#x2F;Science_Exploration&amp;#x2F;Human_and_Robotic_Exploration&amp;#x2F;Exploration&amp;#x2F;Planetary_protection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.esa.int&amp;#x2F;Science_Exploration&amp;#x2F;Human_and_Robotic_Ex...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a handbook and everything:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ec.europa.eu&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;participants&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;downloadPublic&amp;#x2F;NHY0a2o4bVRJQWhPQkpRajBuRWNXWTgxdS9RWEFXdXJBUzVVeDA1WXYzbXpBeGJ5dWZyd3N3PT0=&amp;#x2F;attachment&amp;#x2F;VFEyQTQ4M3ptUWRBd1IwZnoramRydVNQZlNYQUplalA=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ec.europa.eu&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;participants&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;downloa...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter’s moon Europa</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29458-3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>The interesting question is that since water is such a fantastic medium for earth-based life, how can we make sure that any probe sent from here to say, sample the water on Europa won&amp;#x27;t contaminate it. It&amp;#x27;s my understanding that even though all planetary landers are sanitized it&amp;#x27;s almost impossible to make sure no life survives on them. Which I guess isn&amp;#x27;t too much of an issue on the moon or Mars, but any microbes would have much better chances of surviving in the water environment of Europa.</text></item><item><author>thinkingkong</author><text>The implication is that there’s liquid water right under the surface if Europa. That would be fairly exciting if confirmed. Im not sure theres a single place on earth with water but not without life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Cthulhu_</author><text>Makes me wonder if even a probe never landing would &amp;#x27;shed&amp;#x27; some biological material that eventually makes its way onto the surface.&lt;p&gt;Then again, there&amp;#x27;s plenty of theories that asteroids and other impacts have caused enough of a splash to throw trace life bearing materials into space and eventually onto other planets or moons.&lt;p&gt;My current theory is that we will find traces of e.g. bacteria all over our solar system, but it&amp;#x27;ll be genetically traceable back to Earth. That said, if it turns out life as we know actually started on e.g. Mars, that would be huge and probably a big accelerator for more missions there.</text></comment>