- 3935 - EUROPA - water makes a different ocean? Salt and water are very well known at Earth conditions. Now we have these planetary objects that probably have compounds that are very familiar to us, but in very exotic conditions. We have to redo all the fundamental mineralogical science.
------------ 3935 - EUROPA - water makes a different ocean?
- Galileo
spacecraft took an image of Jupiter’s moon Europa in the summer of 2001. In the
colorized version there can be seen strange red streaks, appearing almost like
the capillaries feeding on a giant eyeball.
-
- Scientists
assumed those streaks were a mixture of sodium chloride salts of some sort with
water ice, but the chemical signature of these streaks in spectrometer readings
don’t match those of any known salts on Earth.
And, the salts on Europa appear
to contain more water.
-
- Recreating
the high-pressure conditions seen in the miles-thick icy crust of Europa in a
laboratory and measuring how that changed the formation of ice crystals from a
brine mixture qas a firt step.
-
- They
discovered the first new salty ice water crystal structures found in more than
a century, structures that are likely candidates for the strange salty material
on Europa’s surface.
-
- The liquid
water ocean believed to exist beneath the moon’s icy crust, in touch with a
rocky core and heated geothermically, is one of the most promising spots for
the development of alien life in the Solar System.
-
- The key discoveries
here are two new chemical structures where salts and water form a lattice held
together with hydrogen bonds, known as hydrates. They are the first new
hydrates discovered since 1847, when first, and until now, only hydrate was
first described.
-
- But
“hydrohalite” doesn’t contain much water in its structure, with just two water
molecules for every one salt molecule. The two new hydrates are “hyper
hydrated,” with one containing 13 water molecules for every salt molecule, and
the other holding 17 water molecules for every salt molecule.
-
- The
researchers created brines with varying degrees of salt and then subjected them
to intense pressures as high as 25,000 Earth atmospheres between two small
diamonds, with the diamonds serving as windows to allow viewing through a
microscope.
-
- Pressure
just gets the molecules closer together, so their interaction changes. That is the main engine for diversity in the
crystal structures. The crystals, born
in high pressure, remained stable as the pressure was lowered to Earth levels,
so long as temperatures remained at minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit or colder.
-
- Because salt
can act like antifreeze and keep water liquid at colder temperatures, it may
play an important role inside Europa, keeping its subsurface ocean in a liquid
phase.
-
-
Understanding the forms that salt takes on the moon could help
scientists interpret the findings of upcoming planetary science missions, like
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission scheduled to launch in 2024, the space agency’s
Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan scheduled for 2026, and the European
Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which is scheduled to launch in
April,2023.
-
- These are
the only planetary bodies, other than Earth, where liquid water is stable at
geological timescales, which is crucial for the emergence and development of
life. They are the best place in our
solar system to discover extraterrestrial life.
-
- We need to
study their exotic oceans and interiors to better understand how they formed,
evolved, and can retain liquid water in cold regions of the Solar System, so
far away from the Sun.
-
March 28, 2023 EUROPA -
water makes a different ocean? 3935
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--- Wednesday, March 29, 2023 ---------------------------
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