Life after death: Europa in the evolving Habitable Zone of a Red Sun
Elijah Mullens, Britney Schmidt, Lisa Kaltenegger, Nikole K. Lewis

TL;DR
This paper models Europa's surface and atmospheric evolution during the red giant phase of its star, showing potential for habitable conditions and ways to observe sublimating exomoons, expanding possibilities for life after stellar death.
Contribution
It provides a detailed 2D model of Europa's surface and atmosphere under red giant habitable zone conditions, highlighting potential habitability and observational signatures.
Findings
Europa's sub-Jovian hemisphere largely sublimates due to increased albedo.
Both hemispheres sublimate substantially with rising instellation.
Water vapor atmosphere remains stable for at least 0.2 Gyr in the red giant zone.
Abstract
Most stars end their main-sequence (MS) lives by evolving through the red-giant and asymptotic-giant branches before ending as a quiescent, stable white dwarf. Therefore, it is imperative to model the post-MS as it relates to long-term stability of environments potentially suitable for life. Recent work has shown that gas giants can exist in the habitable zone (HZ) during the red giant phase and around a white dwarf remnant. Icy moons represent large reservoirs of water and will evolve through sublimation and melting when exposed to higher instellation, where the relatively lower surface gravity could lead to the rapid loss of all surface water. We model the surface evolution of Europa when initially exposed to habitable zone instellation in the red giant branch. Modeling the diurnal and yearly flux variations on a 2D map we show that, due to Jupiter's increased albedo, the sub-Jovian…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science
