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→Speculation about Life
With the arrival of Galileo and the data from Galileo's early exploration of Europa, the speculation became even more feverish.<ref name=resa>"[http://www.resa.net/nasa/europa_life.htm Life on Europa]." ''[http://www.resa.net/nasa/xlife_intro.htm Life on Other Planets in the Solar System]'', October 22, 1998. Accessed February 29, 2008.</ref><ref name=solarviews/><ref name=Arnett/> Even the finding of sulfuric acid, a harsh chemical, on Europa has not dampened that speculation.<ref name=acid/>
With the arrival of Galileo and the data from Galileo's early exploration of Europa, the speculation became even more feverish.<ref name=resa>"[http://www.resa.net/nasa/europa_life.htm Life on Europa]." ''[http://www.resa.net/nasa/xlife_intro.htm Life on Other Planets in the Solar System]'', October 22, 1998. Accessed February 29, 2008.</ref><ref name=solarviews/><ref name=Arnett/> Even the finding of sulfuric acid, a harsh chemical, on Europa has not dampened that speculation.<ref name=acid/>
== Problems for Uniformitarian Theories ==
By far the most salient problem that Europa poses for uniformitarians is its apparent "geologic youth." How such "young" bodies as Europa and its inner neighbor [[Io]] came to participate in a three-part orbital resonance with a so-much-"older" body ([[Ganymede]]) begs explanation. Those wishing to assert that Io and Europa did indeed form much more recently than did Ganymede (and [[Callisto]], the fourth member of the family of Galilean moons) must be prepared to state where those two bodies came from, if they did not form at the same time as the rest of the [[solar system]].
At least some authorities assert that Io, for example, only ''looks'' "young" because its volcanoes are constantly filling in any impact craters that are forming. Others assert that Europa looks "young" because its subterranean liquid ocean, if it has one, is resilient and thus able to absorb most meteor impacts without forming craters.<ref name=whyfiles>"[http://whyfiles.org/060moons/europa.html Europa--orbiting incubator]?" ''The Why Files''. Accessed March 1, 2008.</ref> Yet this begs the question of why the three large impact craters known to exist on Europa have persisted.
== Exploration ==
== Exploration ==