Schmidt, a scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, and her colleagues wanted to know how chaos terrains form. Since they couldn t rocket to Europa to see for themselves, they searched for similar formations here on Earth. They studied collapsed ice shelves in Antarctica and icy caps on volcanoes in Iceland. Those features on Earth formed when liquid water mixed with ice. The scientists now suspect something similar might be happening on Europa: that as water and ice of different temperatures mingle and shift, the surface fractures. This would explain the jumbled ice sculptures.
“Fracturing catastrophically disrupts the ice in the same way that it causes ice shelves to collapse on Earth,” Schmidt told Science News. She and her team found that the process could be causing chaos terrains to form quickly on Europa.
The new study suggests that on this moon, elements such as oxygen from the surface blend with the deep bodies of water. That mixture may create an environment that supports life.
16. The liquid water of an underground pool of Europa is estimated xxxxx of the US Great lakes.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mention
17. The strange ice patterns on Europa are formed as a result of a xxxxx underground water pool.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mention
18. Europa is the most recently discovered one among Jupiter s
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mention
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