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Giant Footprints? Highways? Pentagrams? New NASA Photos Of Europa Ignite Social Media

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New high-resolution photos of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa show the surface is covered with something akin to highways rather than craters, and they go on for miles. Europa is believed to be the most likely spot in the solar system to find life outside of Earth. NASA’s Juno mission captured the photos Sept. 29 during a rare flyby that got within about 256 miles of the surface, and scientists admit one photo “of the moon’s heavily fractured icy crust” is puzzling. “The image covers about 93 miles (150 kilometers) by 125 miles (200 kilometers) of Europa’s surface, revealing a region crisscrossed with a network of fine grooves and double ridges (pairs of long parallel lines indicating elevated features in the ice),” NASA says. Social media commenters immediately began offering theories, with some calling the lines a road map of highways, others suggesting they’re tracks left by something sliding across the ice, and a few pointing out they saw pentagrams in the photo. As for the “dark stains” NASA cited, some noted that spot looks more like one “giant footprint… (READ MORE)

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