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Space
Space
Science
Charles Q. Choi

Surprise! Jupiter's ocean moon Europa may not have a fully formed core

jupiter's moon europa, its icy surface criscrossed by dark reddish-brown lines, against the blackness of space

The core of Jupiter's ocean moon Europa might have formed billions of years after the rest of it did, if indeed it has formed at all, a new study finds.

Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, is covered in an icy shell. However, researchers suspect that underneath its frozen crust, Europa hosts a saltwater ocean churning over its rocky mantle. It may possess "more liquid water than Earth," study lead author Kevin Trinh, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe, told Space.com.

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