When a spacecraft was launched to search for water and life on Mars on Aug. 12, some scientists also cast their eyes on the more remote Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, with the hope that the ice-covered satellite is more likely to harbor life than Mars -- if indeed life exists somewhere else in our Solar System.
"So far as we known, the chances to find life beyond the Earth are very, very slim, while the chances might be a little more likely in Europa than Mars," said Simon Conway Morris, a noted Professor of evolutionary palaeobiology at Cambridge University.
On Mars if there was life, it would most probably be extinct and you would need paleontologists to go to the Mars and study possible biological structures and sediments. Only paleontologists are trained to study extinct life, he said.
It takes longer to get to Europa than to get to Mars since Europa is located in the outer solar system.
Robert Gaines, a paleontologist with Pomona College in the United States, said, "the Europa is extremely cold and hostile for life and people still have no idea about its sub-surface geology."
"It would be surprising to find life on the planet, but many surprising things have come true," he added.
Europa is roughly the size of the Earth's moon and covered with a thick crust of ice.
Scientists speculate life forms may exist under the crust of ice, living in the oceans below.
An experiment by Stanley Miller in 1953 indicated that with water, certain gas and heat, the substances essential for life could be formed in certain reaction.
Based on the experiment, scientists believed life might exist on Europa since the satellite contains water and the heat caused by the tidal tug of war with Jupiter and other neighboring moons.
Plans to land on the moon are being discussed in Europe and the United States.
One of the current missions planned by NASA within the next three years is an orbiter mission around Europa. It will orbit the moon and scan the surface with radar to determine the thickness of the icy crust, and possibly the depth of the oceans underneath.
Last week about 15 paleontologists from inside and outside China, including Conway Morris and Robert Gaines, studied rocks and fossils in southwest China's Guizhou Province, which boasts excellent deposits of earlier life on the Earth. They came to China for an international symposium on Cambrian System, which is being held in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.
(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2005)
