Discovery of Geysers on Europa
In 2014, an international team of researchers published a groundbreaking paper in the journal Science that defined the direction of study for icy moons of the Solar System for years to come. Based on ultraviolet observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists announced the discovery of geysers of water vapor erupting from beneath Europa's icy crust.
Context and Background
The authors claimed to have detected two powerful plumes rising to heights of up to 200 kilometers, with cracks in the icy crust opening and closing under the influence of Jupiter's tidal forces. In 2016, another group of astronomers confirmed these findings in a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, noting signs of activity in 3 out of 10 observations, although they already cautioned colleagues to be cautious due to possible systematic errors.
Industry Impact
A new study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics completely debunks the previous findings. Ironically, the study was led by Dr. Lorenz Roth from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, the same scientist who was the lead author of the triumphant 2014 paper. Roth's team re-examined the entire dataset collected by the Hubble Space Telescope's spectrograph over 14 years of observations when Europa was illuminated by the Sun.
Conclusion
The authors' confidence in the existence of geysers has dropped from 99.9% to below 90%, which in the academic community rules out claims of discovery. Instead of local fountains of vapor, Hubble appears to have actually detected a distributed hydrogen exosphere around Europa, which forms through the gradual destruction of surface water ice under the influence of radiation. Part of the detected hydrogen belonged to the extended corona of the Earth itself.