#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. A team of scientists from Scotland went on a month-long expedition to the Canadian Arctic to find out if there is water or life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. This is reported by IA Regnum with reference to the British online magazine The Press and Journal.
The expedition takes place in Resolute bay, which is an Inuit community and the second northernmost city in the Maple Leaf Country. The scientists’ goal is to search for potential lakes under the Devon ice cap, an uninhabited island in the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Previous airborne geophysical studies have identified anomalies under the ice cap that are thought to be subglacial lakes.
The thickness of the ice cap is 762 meters and the temperature is below 14.5 degrees Celsius. This means that for lake water to be liquid, it should be about five times saltier than sea water.
If the team finds evidence of liquid water under the ice cap, there could be the potential to create a globally unique habitat for microbes. This could help understand what type of life might exist on other planets.
The study is part of the Arctic Environmental Change Study project, which is a collaboration between scientists and indigenous people to understand environmental change in the Arctic. The results of the expedition are planned to be published by the end of the year.
In turn, Russian scientists, members of the XV expedition of the Arctic floating university, are conducting a research works complex on the Franz Josef Land archipelago.
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Text: Elena Popova, photo: Mikhail Yelesin
