The watery moon of Jupiter, Europa, is covered with table salt

Europa, Jupiter, the fourth gas giant around the moon, hides a liquid, salty ocean beneath its icy shell. can contain the ingredients necessary for life. A new study found that the surface of Europe was full of sodium chloride – table salt – and concluded that the ocean hidden under the ice of Europe could be more similar to the Earth's oceans that we had not imagined before.

The study, published Wednesday in Science Advances by Caltech researchers and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows for the first time that yellow spots on Europa's surface, noticed for the first time by the NASA, prove that Voyager and Galileo decades ago actually indicate the presence of sodium chloride.

Even more surprising is the fact that table salt has been hidden for years. The scientists just did not look for it.

"Sodium chloride is a bit like invisible ink on the surface of Europa," NASA's Kevin Hand said in a press release. "Before irradiation, you can not say that it is there, but after irradiation, the color is obvious to you."

To make this discovery, the team irradiated ordinary white table salt in a laboratory simulating the conditions present on Europa. They discovered that white salt was taking on a hint of yellow – the same tinge of yellow spotted by NASA's Galileo spacecraft during its imaging missions between 1995 and 2003. To confirm, they shot the space telescope Hubble to Europa and asked him to confirm the yellows on the surface emitted a chemical signal that represented the irradiated table salt. It made.

This is a particularly important discovery because of what it can tell us about the chemistry of the ocean below the surface. If sodium chloride actually comes from Europe, the moon's ocean could look a lot more like the Earth's. In the distant future, it could provide a place to mine or even settle. However, the authors note that they can not yet tell if the surface table salt definitely represents the composition of the ocean underwater.

Nevertheless, this opens the door to more in-depth research on Europa and suggests that it could even be more geologically active than scientists thought.

If you want to take a look at Jupiter and his moons, there's no better time. Jupiter is so close to the Earth right now that you only need a pair of binoculars. Europa is particularly brilliant, so you should not have trouble finding it. Take some popcorn and make it one night.