Europa’s high-pressure water spouts
Astronomers say exploring Jupiter’s icy moon Europa for signs of life should be a priority after reviewing images from the Hubble Space Telescope thought to be of water vapour plumes. The plumes spout about 200 km (125 miles) into the atmosphere at 700 m (2,300 feet) a second over the south polar regions. The event only happens for seven hours at a time, peaking when Europa is farthest from Jupiter in its orbit and Jupiter’s gravity effect is lowest, and stops when it’s closest.
The speculation is that because there is so much water, there must be life. But ‘water’ does not equal ‘life’—indeed, water breaks down the big molecules necessary for life (see creation.com/mars-water, creation.com/polymer). So the evolutionary media ‘spin’ linking the discovery to hopes of finding extra-terrestrial life is utterly misplaced.
What’s more, Europa’s fantastically violent water spouts represent a huge challenge to millions-of-years ideas. And not just Europa’s plumes. The researchers themselves noted the similarities to the high-pressure vapour emissions observed on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. If Europa and Enceladus really were 4.5 billion years old, such small objects should have long been cold and inactive, rather than producing the energy they do.
Evolutionists can’t satisfactorily explain the moons’ dramatic activity. From a biblical creation perspective however, because the universe is only thousands of years old, then some of the ‘puzzles’ that Europa and Enceladus pose no longer need answering. (For more see: creation.com/young-saturn, ~/enceladus-young, ~/jupiter.)
- Jupiter’s icy moon Europa ‘spouts water’, bbc.co.uk, 12 December 2013.
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