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No magmatic driving force for Europan sea-floor volcanism

Nature Astronomy volume 9, pages 640–649 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The internal ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa is thought to be a prime candidate for hosting extraterrestrial life. Europa’s silicate interior may contribute to habitability through the generation of reactants from hydrothermal activity, serpentinization or other geological processes occurring on or just below Europa’s sea floor. However, silicates are thought to melt at depths >100 km in Europa’s mantle, and it is unknown whether this magma can penetrate and travel through the moon’s probably thick, brittle lithosphere to erupt at the sea floor. We combine previous approaches for modelling melt generation in the Europan interior and lithospheric dyke transport to show that Europan sea-floor volcanism is strongly inhibited by its lithosphere. The low stress state of the Europan interior hinders the ability of dykes to penetrate through the lithosphere. Should dykes form, they penetrate <5% of the 200–250-km-thick lithosphere. Low mantle melt fractions (3–5%) drive a sluggish pore-space magma flow, leading to dyke influxes 10,000 times lower than that necessary for sea-floor eruption. These results strongly indicate that models of Europan habitability reliant on present-day volcanism at its sea floor are implausible.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of the state of the reference model after 200 Myr of modelled time.
Fig. 2: The effect of magma viscosity.
Fig. 3: The effect of mantle permeability.
Fig. 4: The effect of increased radiogenic heat.

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Data availability

All data used to generate the results presented in this work and their associated input parameter files are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10850608 (ref. 55).

Code availability

The convection code StagYY is the property of P.J.T. and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich. Researchers interested in using StagYY should contact P.J.T. (paul.tackley@erdw.ethz.ch).

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Acknowledgements

The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant No. 80NM0018D0004; recipients A.P.G., M.T.B. and C.M.E.). Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government. © 2024. All rights reserved.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    A. P. Green & C. M. Elder

  2. US Geological Survey, Astrogeology Science Center, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    M. T. Bland

  3. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

    P. J. Tackley

  4. Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA

    P. K. Byrne

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Contributions

A.P.G. led the project; conceptualized, designed and implemented all new additions to StagYY; constructed the Europa interior model; generated all results and wrote the text. C.M.E. and M.T.B. conceptualized the research direction and acquired funding. C.M.E. directly supervised the research and writing process and provided substantial draft revisions. M.T.B. advised on dyke propagation and the acquisition of results and provided substantial draft revisions. P.J.T. advised on model development in StagYY and provided draft revisions. P.K.B. provided substantial draft revisions.

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Correspondence to A. P. Green.

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Green, A.P., Elder, C.M., Bland, M.T. et al. No magmatic driving force for Europan sea-floor volcanism. Nat Astron 9, 640–649 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02508-8

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