ArticleAstrobiology2017
The Possible Emergence of Life and Differentiation of a Shallow Biosphere on Irradiated Icy Worlds: The Example of Europa.
Article in Astrobiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- Probing the habitability of potential sulfuric acid rich subsurface lakes in Europa's ice shell viaFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Cooperation and Competition Were Primary Driving Forces for Biological Evolution.Microbial physiology · 2025Review
- Microbes from ambient-pressure analogues offer insights into possible life in Europa's high-pressure subsurface ocean.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Growth, physiology, and metabolism ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- The Origin of RNA and the Formose-Ribose-RNA Pathway.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Bioenergetics of iron snow fueling life on Europa.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Chemolithoautotrophic bacteria flourish at dark water-ice interfaces of an emerged Arctic cold seep.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- A Review on Hypothesized Metabolic Pathways on Europa and Enceladus: Space-Flight Detection Considerations.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Investigating Europa's Habitability with the Europa Clipper.Space science reviews · 2023Review
- Modeling Virus and Bacteria Populations in Europa's Subsurface Ocean.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Underground Microseismic Event Monitoring and Localization within Sensor Networks.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Six 'Must-Have' Minerals for Life's Emergence: Olivine, Pyrrhotite, Bridgmanite, Serpentine, Fougerite and Mackinawite.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- A Constructive Way to Think about Different Hydrothermal Environments for the Origins of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Living at the Extremes: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context.Frontiers in microbiology · 2019Review
- Methane: Fuel or Exhaust at the Emergence of Life?Astrobiology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Irradiated ice-covered ocean worlds with rocky mafic mantles may provide the conditions needed to drive the emergence and maintenance of life. Alkaline hydrothermal springs-relieving the geophysical, thermal, and chemical disequilibria between oceans and tidally stressed crusts-could generate inorganic barriers to the otherwise uncontrolled and kinetically disfavored oxidation of hydrothermal hydrogen and methane. Ionic gradients imposed across these inorganic barriers, comprising iron oxyhydroxides and sulfides, could drive the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide and the oxidation of methane through thermodynamically favorable metabolic pathways leading to early life-forms. In such chemostatic environments, fuels may eventually outweigh oxidants. Ice-covered oceans are primarily heated from below, creating convection that could transport putative microbial cells and cellular cooperatives upward to congregate beneath an ice shell, potentially giving rise to a highly focused shallow biosphere. It is here where electron acceptors, ultimately derived from the irradiated surface, could be delivered to such life-forms through exchange with the icy surface. Such zones would act as "electron disposal units" for the biosphere, and occupants might be transferred toward the surface by buoyant diapirs and even entrained into plumes. Key Words: Biofilms-Europa-Extraterrestrial life-Hydrothermal systems. Astrobiology 17, 1265-1273.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.