METEORITES slamming into Europa may be sending electrical shocks through the Jovian moon’s icy crust. The energy released could be enough to drive the formation of the complex organic molecules necessary for life, researchers speculate.
Jerome Borucki and colleagues at the NASA Ames Research Center in California wanted to simulate the effects of a meteorite striking the icy surface of Europa, so they fired an aluminium bullet at a block of ice. The ice was cooled to −196 °C to simulate conditions on the moon, and the bullet was travelling at 6 kilometres per second. To their surprise, a detector…
