{"id":493905,"date":"2026-05-20T09:50:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/493905\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:50:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:50:32","slug":"do-europas-water-plumes-really-exist-new-study-reopens-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/493905\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Europa\u2019s Water Plumes Really Exist? New Study Reopens Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research led by planetary scientists from Southwest Research Institute and KTH Royal Institute of Technology suggests that evidence for vapor erupting from Jupiter\u2019s icy moon Europa may be less conclusive than once believed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This is an artist\u2019s impression of a water-vapor geyser on Europa. Image credit: University of Cologne.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evidence for water vapor plumes on Europa isn\u2019t as strong as we first understood it,\u201d said Dr. Kurt Retherford, a researcher at Southwest Research Institute one of the authors of a 2014 paper initially making that assertion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the new study, Dr. Retherford and his colleague analyzed data collected by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (HST\/STIS) aboard the NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 1999 and between 2012 and 2020.<\/p>\n

They focused on Europa\u2019s Lyman-alpha emission<\/a>, a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted and scattered by hydrogen atoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the difficulties in interpreting the data back then was determining where to place Europa within its context,\u201d Dr. Retherford said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way Hubble works left some uncertainty in terms of placement relative to the center of the image.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Europa\u2019s placement was off even just by a pixel or two, it could affect how the data gets interpreted.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, what the researchers thought could be evidence of a water vapor plume could also just be statistical noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur reanalysis took our original 99.9% confidence in the plumes\u2019 existence and reduced it to less than 90% confidence,\u201d said Dr. Lorenz Roth, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s simply not enough evidence to support the certainty of claims we made at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current dataset does not rule out the possibility of the water vapor plumes described in the 2014 paper, but it no longer provides concrete evidence of them,\u201d Dr. Retherford said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe description of the phenomena just doesn\u2019t hold up the same way anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new data have made us reconsider the strength of the previous paper\u2019s conclusion regarding water vapor plumes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recent analysis also provides improved information about the neutral hydrogen atom component of Europa\u2019s escaping atmosphere, originating from its water ice surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still hope to find water vapor plumes escaping from Europa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilar water vapor plumes have been confirmed on Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus, and Europa\u2019s neighbor Io, another moon of Jupiter, has plumes of sulfur dioxide expanding out into space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s new paper<\/a> was published May 5 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

L. Roth et al. 2026. Europa\u2019s Lyman-\u03b1 emissions from HST\/STIS observations. A&A 709, A59; doi: 10.1051\/0004-6361\/202659406<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research led by planetary scientists from Southwest Research Institute and KTH Royal Institute of Technology suggests that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[1204,18,6145,12403,64266,7446,19,17,2663,171557,1024,133,10214,451,215354,447,200080],"class_list":["post-493905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-planet","tag-eire","tag-esa","tag-europa","tag-geyser","tag-hubble","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jupiter","tag-lyman-alpha-radiation","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-solar-system","tag-space","tag-vapor","tag-water","tag-water-vapor"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116606286366893352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}