'The ice is cracking!' Um, no.
Water ice that far from the sun would be as hard as steel on Earth. Also, isn't the ice like miles thick? Awesome movie otherwise, save for the ending.
shareApparently the ice on Europa could be cracked as a result of the gravitational pull of Jupiter. I do remember something about that on one of those Nova specials about Jupiter's moon. Jupiter squishes and stretches it's moons in their orbits. It explains why the surface of Europa is covered in cracked looking ice.
shareI've heard the same on a recent How the Universe Work. The squishing and stretching also causes the core to stay heated and create underwater volcanoes. They've even detected geysers on the surface recently.
shareThat's how it is. The images they used in the movie were real images of Europa. Jupiter causes tidal flexing on the moon and it creates a lot friction endused heat. The icy surface of Europa indeed keeps cracking all the time. There's also massive geysirs there. The surface is pretty much iced water and there's a lot of oxygen in the gas field. By all scientific accounts, there is a massive ocean below the surface, reaching ten's of kilometers deep.
shareVery interesting.
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