“A recent study by geophysicists at Washington State University offers insight into how nutrients may reach the subsurface ocean of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons and a leading candidate for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. Scientists have long wondered how life-sustaining nutrients could make it from the surface into Europa’s ice-covered ocean, where microscopic life is believed to exist. Drawing from a process from Earth’s geology known as crustal delamination, the research team used computer modeling to show that dense, nutrient-rich ice can separate from the surrounding ice and descend into the ocean,” says a press release from Washington State.

Complicated story short, the shit that could sustain life under the very thick ice shell around Europa seeps into the volcanically-warmed liquid ocean underneath and feeds the “microscopic” organisms that may or may not exist. The “microscopic” part seems to be kind of gratuitous scientific conservatism, like what the hell makes them so sure that an ocean that’s existed for 4 billion years doesn’t contain an ecosystem just as complex as Earth’s oceanosphere or even more so.

Nobody’s ever really going to know what’s down there until astronauts with a lot of heavy-duty equipment land on the snowball and start drilling to send a probe down. And then that fucker better be sterilized to hell to ensure a virgin ocean isn’t destroyed by something stupid like botulism.