Absolutely. We're not even certain if life exists (or ever previously existed) on planets that we have hardware on.
The criteria in the article were input energy and a "bath" into which that energy can be dissipated. Perhaps there is a minimum potential difference before structures will self-organize--or perhaps the probability of self-organization is proportional to the difference.
Speculating along this line of reasoning: On Mercury, you have plenty of input energy, but few options for dissipating it. On Europa, you may have the reverse problem.
For all we know, however, Europa may actually have life. Our sample set is too small.
Comments
Possibly because we don't actually know very much about other planets.
Absolutely. We're not even certain if life exists (or ever previously existed) on planets that we have hardware on.
The criteria in the article were input energy and a "bath" into which that energy can be dissipated. Perhaps there is a minimum potential difference before structures will self-organize--or perhaps the probability of self-organization is proportional to the difference.
Speculating along this line of reasoning: On Mercury, you have plenty of input energy, but few options for dissipating it. On Europa, you may have the reverse problem.
For all we know, however, Europa may actually have life. Our sample set is too small.