Upside-down Snow on Europa
It wouldn't surprise you much to think of Snow falling in the Artic or Antarctic, but on Europa where there isn't water vapour moving about in the atmosphere, the snow doesn't fall, instead, it rises upwards.
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have been modelling different kinds of ice formation and applying it to the conditions on Europa and Enceladus to see what processes are in play there.
They looked at two different kinds of ice generation, congelation (ice forming around the edges of existing ice) and Frazil Ice which forms around supercooled crystals of ice and then rises upwards.
The latter was found to be the most common scenario, meaning the ice found at the surface which is thought to cover an inner ocean, is being formed by ice crystals rising upwards out of that ocean, and indeed snowing upwards.
