The number of talks about worlds with hidden oceans would almost make me believe Bennu is the only dry object in the Solar System. It’s not, but if researcher Alan Stern is right, the ocean worlds, including Pluto, Europa, Tritan, and many others, are actually better places for life to evolve than our own planet Earth. According to a release on his work: Worlds like Earth, with oceans on their exterior, are also subject to many kinds of threats to life, ranging from asteroid and comet impacts to stellar flares with dangerous radiation, to nearby supernova explosions, and more. 

Frozen ocean worlds, with crusts tens of kilometers thick, can protect any life they harbor from all these threats. Currently, we don’t have the ability to sufficiently sterilize a spacecraft or dig efficiently through the ice, which means we can’t send a mission to look for this kind of life, and even if we had the ability, we couldn’t do it without risking killing off that life with our world’s germs. Still, I maintain hope that within my lifetime or the next generation’s lifetime, we will develop the needed tech, and some still-to-be-imagined robots will go looking for life in alien oceans.

More Information

SwRI press release

Some Implications for Both Life and Civilizations Regarding Interior Water Ocean Worlds (LPSC abstract)