Could Jupiters largest moon, Ganymede, support life?
I want to be optimistic and say yes, but it would take a lot of tweaking however. We do not have the means to do this as of yet. ‘A confusing point is, if life evolved on Ganymede, why are there other airless worlds with organic tholin compounds? Surely they couldn’t have evolved life independently? Both Ganymede and Callisto seem to be covered with the complex “tholins”, but they are absent on most other worlds. My surmise about Callisto is that Ganymede evolved life, and that small plant spores or Ganymedean ‘algae’ managed to ‘hitchhike ‘ to Callisto on debris kicked up by meteors, found good soil, and grew there to form the dark ‘fluffy’ layer covering Callisto’s surface. Thus, while Ganymede and Callisto are covered in organic materials, neighboring Europa, whose mostly ice surface is too radioactive to support life, has none. Ganymede is well protected by its magnetic field from Jupiter’s ionic radiation which streams towards the trailing hemispheres of its satellites. On Callist
It has been suggested that Ganymede may be amenable to life. However, scientists say that the chances of life existing on Europa are much higher than on Ganymede, because Europa’s ocean is closer to the surface than Ganymede’s. While temperatures are extremely low, and there is very little atmosphere, it does have its own magnetic field that might protect life from harmful radiation, and it lies in a relatively quiet radio zone around Jupiter unlike Europa. From : http://en.wikipedia.
Maybe so. Its only a matter of time before some form of life is found somewhere in the solar system. Other possibilities are Titan, and Mars. It is worth bearing in mind that life turns up in unexpected places. Like the suplhur volcanic vents on the ocean floor. Simple organisms found floating around down there inside those vents, temperature 400 celsius, no light, no oxygen !
