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James Webb telescope finds potential signature of life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa

www.livescience.com James Webb telescope finds potential signature of life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa

The discovery of seemingly home-grown carbon dioxide suggests Europa's ice-covered ocean could be habitable.

James Webb telescope finds potential signature of life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed homemade carbon dioxide on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, raising the possibility that the frigid waterworld could host life.

The new detection by JWST is intriguing because the carbon dioxide does not seem to have been carried by a meteorite or asteroid, and it appears in a geologically young region of the moon called Tara Regio, suggesting the gas may have formed within the moon itself.

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