Salt water inside Jupiter's Europa moon could be carrying oxygen to an underground ocean

Salt water within the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa could be transporting oxygen into an ice-covered ocean of liquid water, a new study suggests. Researchers think it could potentially help sustain alien life under the moon's'chaos terrains' -- landscapes made up of cracks, ridges and ice blocks that cover a quarter of the icy world. They believe the amount of oxygen brought into Europa's ocean could be on a par with the quantity in Earth's oceans today. The theory has been proposed before, but University of Texas at Austin-led experts put it to the test by building the world's first physics-based computer simulation of the process. Salt water within the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa could be transporting oxygen into an ice-covered ocean of liquid water (pictured in an artist's impression), a new study suggests The theory has been proposed before, but University of Texas at Austin-led experts put it to the test by building the world's first physics-based computer simulation of the process (pictured) Europa is 90 per cent the size of Earth's moon.