Newly discovered salty ice could exist on surface of faraway moons

By James Gamble via SWNS

A newly discovered form of salty ice could provide scientists with key information on the frozen oceans of faraway moons - which may contain extraterrestrial life.

Researchers who mixed table salt with water under high pressure and extremely low temperatures inadvertently unearthed a previously unknown solid crystal.

And scientists believe the same compound could also be found in the depths of the frozen oceans of Jupiter's moons.

The study, led by the University of Washington, is hoped to help upcoming missions to explore these moons, which are considered by scientists to be some of the most promising areas in our solar system in our search for alien life.

The team began experiments by compressing a tiny amount of salty water between two diamonds, each roughly the size of a grain of sand.

The liquid was "squeezed" at up to 25,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure.

The transparent diamonds allowed the scientists to watch the process through a microscope.

The team had been planning to measure how adding salt could change the amount of ice they created - but instead discovered something they hadn't expected.

Dr. Baptiste Journaux, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences at UW and lead author of the study, explained the magnitude of the exciting and 'serendipitous' discovery.

Dr. Journeaux said: "It’s rare nowadays to have fundamental discoveries in science.

"Salt and water are very well known at Earth conditions, but beyond that, we’re totally in the dark.

"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 that people did in the 1800s, but at high pressure and low temperature… It is an exciting time.

"We were trying to measure how adding salt would change the amount of ice we could get, since salt acts as an antifreeze.

"Surprisingly, when we put the pressure on, what we saw is that these crystals that we were not expecting started growing.

"It was a very serendipitous discovery.”

These extremely cold, high-pressure environments created in the lab are thought to be common on Jupiter's moons, such as Europa; the striking red streaks of which have remained a mystery to scientists until now.

Some of the moons orbiting Jupiter - of which there are 80 - are believed to contain ice surfaces covering oceans that could be several hundred kilometers thick, with even denser forms of ice possible at the bottom.

The discovery of this new type of salty ice has been hailed as not only important for planetary science but also for physical chemistry and energy research, which uses hydrates - substances containing water - for energy storage.

Dr. Journaux added: "It has the structure that planetary scientists have been waiting for.

"Pressure just gets the molecules closer together, so their interaction changes — that is the main engine for diversity in the crystal structures we found."

Once the newly discovered hydrates had formed, the scientists found that one of the two structures remained stable even after the pressure was released.

The study team hopes to either make or collect a larger sample for further analysis and hopes their research may assist upcoming missions to faraway moons in our solar system.

The European Space Agency (ESA) launch its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission in April, whilst The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) - which helped fund the research - will launch its own Europa Clipper mission in October 2024.

NASA's Dragonfly mission, for which Dr Journeaux is a member of the science team, will also launch to Saturn's icy moon, Titan, in 2026.

Dr. Journaux added: "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, in my opinion, the best place in our solar system to discover extraterrestrial life, so 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."

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.