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Europa
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Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Caption
In the icy bodies around our solar system, radiation emitted from rocky cores could break up water molecules and support hydrogen-eating microbes. A University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) team modeled a natural water-cracking process called radiolysis and applied the model to Europa (pictured) and several other worlds with known or suspected interior oceans.
Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute