Why Europa?
Although the moon of Jupiter is covered in a complete coating of ice, underneath is an ocean that is two times the size of the oceans on Earth. Scientists believe there’s a chance that life has developed in that ocean, which may have all the elements needed — water, carbon, hydrogen, other organic compounds — for life. Still, scientists also admit that any life on Europa might have come from totally different chemical sources than life on Earth and be unrecognizable to them.
Sometime in the 2020s, a NASA probe will fire off from Earth, rocketing into a trip of 550 million miles and several years. Its goal is Europa, one of Jupiter’s 53 moons.
Named the Europa Clipper, it will zoom past the ice-covered moon, its instruments searching for “biomarkers,” signs that life is already there or that conditions are right for it to develop. The enormous ocean under Europa’s icy sheath is considered one of the most-likely places in the solar system for life, but scientists basically hope to find conditions suitable for life or, at best, actual microbes. Sentient beings are virtually an impossibility.
But beyond the huge scientific ramifications of any life on Europa, even microbial, there’s an equally large philosophical angle. If extraterrestrial life is proven to exist, especially an intelligent species, how does that sit with religious faiths? Do their doctrinal tenets include the possibility and discuss what it means? In Christianity, for instance, if God sent Jesus to Earth to spiritually redeem a sinful world, is it possible that he sent Jesus to other planets to do the same thing? In faiths such as Islam and Judaism, did God send prophets to other planets as well?
In short, would life on other worlds cause crises of faith for this world’s religions?