Europa [yur-ROH-pah] is a strange looking moon of Jupiter with a large number of intersecting features. It is unlike Callisto and Ganymede with their heavily cratered crusts. Europa has almost a complete absence of craters as well as almost no vertical relief. As one scientist put it, the features "might have been painted on with a felt marker". There is a possibility that Europa may be internally active due to tidal heating at a level one-tenth or less that of Io. Models of Europa's interior show that beneath a thin 5 km (3 miles) crust of water ice, Europa may have oceans as deep as 50 km (30 miles) or more. The visible markings on Europa could be a result of global expansion where the crust could have fractured, filled with water and froze.
Copyright © 1997-1999 by Calvin J. Hamilton.
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A thought from a real source concerning Europa
