It's most likely that it will be an inert slime... or worse still a complex soup of interconnected virus-like lifeforms floating around and messing with each others DNA
If by some quirk of fate they have fully developed cells and are able to clump them together some Europaeans may look something like this.
Hairy Blind Crabs that live in vertical cracks or cling to the underside of the Ice. They will have never seen the sun.
Our plan is to eventually go there and drop a probe on to the surface. The probe will right itself, collect some bacteria if it exists and then drop a nuclear powered torpedo onto the ice. This has been called the Rudolf Probe as it will melt a way through with it's super hot red nose. see the picture below.
There is some concern that when it eventually does reach liquid water, the release in pressure might cause the water to erupt like a geyser and blow the whole thing, (and a fair few crabs) into space. Hopefully this won't happen. If we can get past this problem then we intend to release an autonomous robot to map the sea around it, search for signs of life and then return to send back it's data. There is a fair chance that no one will be willing to fund the mission. There is an equally fair chance that something will go wrong and even if it doesn't they may go all the way to Europa and find that there is nothing there but freezing saline solution and disappointment.
I don't really know where I am going with this. I guess that I've just been cooped up in my house for a about a fortnight with the flu. in that time I have been wondering about the direction of my life. All the things I know. All the things I am interested in and the tiny number of things I am actually qualified to work on or talk about. I've been trying to write but I seem to have forgotten how. It's like I'm not sure if it's worth all the effort. Not sure if there is anything there.
They say that Mars is a dead planet. It's once liquid iron core has lost all it's heat and solidified. without a liquid iron core the planet doesn't generate a magnetic field, and without a magnetic field, charged particles from the sun are not deflected away and thus it becomes stripped of its atmosphere by the relentless solar wind. There is some hope at the moment that there might still be life on Mars.
Methane gas appears to be coming from deep Martian caverns. Before it froze Mars had loads of liquid water, and it's possible that there may still be liquid beneath the surface, and that that liquid could be teeming with methane producing life.
I hope it is. Like a football fan who wants their team to win the premiership just once before they die, I am hoping for life on Mars. It will make no difference to my life. I just want it to be so.
I'd also like to wake up tomorrow morning with a fully formed plot in my head.
I'm not sure which is least likely.
