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It is also a main component of sea salt. Europa is one of the most intriguing aquatic worlds in our solar system and potentially a place to live in an underwater ocean. The discovery of sodium chloride means that the ocean of Europe could look more like that of the Earth and could even contain salt. Astronomers may need to think differently about the composition of the Europa Ocean.
Previously NASA Voyager and Galileo spacecraft flew over Europa, allowing scientists to discover that the moon had an ocean of salty liquid water under an ice shell. An infrared spectrometer on board Galileo studied the envelope and detected the salts of ice, magnesium sulfate and ice, which are similar to Epsom salts. It was believed that the composition of the shell was similar to that of the ingredients that made up the ocean.
"People have traditionally assumed that all the interesting spectroscopy was in the infrared on planetary surfaces because it is there that most of the molecules sought by scientists have their basic characteristics," said Mike Brown. , co-author of the study and Richard and Barbara. Professor Rosenberg of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, in a statement.
But the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii provided new data with higher spectral resolution to show that the salts were not magnesium sulfates.
"We thought we might be seeing sodium chlorides, but they are essentially peculiar in an infrared spectrum," Brown said.
Kevin Hand, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist, took samples of sea salt from the Earth and hit them with radiation to simulate what it might be like on Europa. Sea salt has changed color and could be identified in the spectrum of light visible in yellow.
It looked like a region of Europe called Tara Regio, which has a distinct yellow color.
"Sodium chloride is a bit like invisible ink on the Europa surface." Before the irradiation, one can not know it, but after irradiation, the color you is obvious, "said Hand.
Follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that the yellow color of Tara Regio was due to irradiated table salt on the surface of Europa.
"Magnesium sulfate would have simply entered the ocean through the rocks of the ocean floor, but sodium chloride could indicate that the ocean floor is hydrothermally active," Samantha said. Trumbo, lead author and graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. "This would mean that Europa is a planetary body more geologically interesting than previously thought."
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