(ORDO NEWS) — The red stripes that cross the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, are striking. Scientists suspect that it is a frozen mixture of water and salts.
A team of researchers led by the University of Washington has discovered a new type of hard crystal that forms when water and table salt combine under conditions of cold and high pressure.
Researchers believe that a new substance, created in a laboratory on Earth, can form on the surface and bottom of the deep oceans of water worlds.
“Fundamental discoveries in science rarely happen these days,” said lead author Baptiste Journano. “Salt and water are very well known in terrestrial conditions. But beyond that, we are completely ignorant.
And now we have these planetary objects that probably contain compounds that are familiar to us, but in very exotic conditions.
We have to redo all the basic mineralogical science that people did in the 1800s, but at high pressure and low temperature.”
At low temperatures, water and salts combine to form a rigid, salty ice lattice known as a hydrate, held in place by hydrogen bonds.
The only previously known sodium chloride hydrate had a simple structure with one molecule of salt for every two molecules of water.
But the two new hydrates, discovered at moderate pressures and low temperatures, are strikingly different from each other.
One contains two sodium chloride for every 17 molecules of water; the other has one sodium chloride for every 13 molecules of water.
This could explain why signatures from the surface of Jupiter’s moons are more watery than expected.
The experiment involved squeezing a tiny amount of salt water between two grain-sized diamonds, causing the liquid to pressurize 25,000 times standard atmospheric pressure.
The transparent diamonds allowed the team to observe the process through a microscope.
“We were trying to measure how adding salt would change the amount of ice we could get since the salt acts like an antifreeze,” Baptiste said.
“Amazingly, when we pressed, we saw that these crystals, which we did not expect, began to grow. It was a very successful discovery.”
Such cold, high-pressure conditions created in a laboratory would be commonplace on Jupiter’s moons.
“Pressure just brings molecules closer together, so their interaction changes this is the main driver of diversity in the crystal structures that we found,” said Journano.
One of the two structures of the detected hydrates remained stable even after depressurization.
“We determined that it remains stable at standard pressure down to about minus 50°C.
So if you have a very salty lake, like in Antarctica, that can be exposed to those temperatures, this newly discovered hydrate could be there,” Journano said.
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