New types of ice discovered, possibly existing on Jupiter’s moons

American scientists have shown that on the icy satellites of the planets of the solar system there may be a type of water ice previously unknown to science. It forms at gigantic pressures and low temperatures, according to the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists have long been surprised by the reddish streaks running across the icy surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. It is believed that a frozen mixture of water and salts has such a color, but until recently it was not possible to confirm this, since the spectrum of these molecules did not coincide with the spectrum of known substances on Earth.
Under cold conditions, water with salts forms what are called hydrates, the atoms in which are held together by hydrogen bonds. The only known hydrate based on table salt (sodium chloride) has a simple structure in which there are two water molecules per salt molecule.
Experimenting with high pressures and low temperatures, scientists from the University of Washington (USA) created for the first time two new types of hydrates, one of which contains 17 molecules of water per molecule of salt and the other 13 molecules of water per molecule of salt. According to scientists, this may explain the fact that in the spectra of the so-called salts on the satellites of Jupiter there are many more hydrogen atoms than expected.
In the experiment, scientists squeezed a small volume of salt water between two grain-sized diamonds, raising the pressure to 25,000 times atmospheric pressure.
Similar conditions may well exist on Jupiter’s icy moons, where water ice 5 to 10 kilometers thick covers vast oceans of water, scientists say. It has been shown that the hydrate with the formula 2NaCl*17H2O can remain stable at temperatures of -38 degrees Celsius and below, potentially making it the most common salt hydrate on icy solar system objects like Europa , Titan, Ganymede and the dwarf planet Ceres.
“In our time, making a fundamental discovery in science is a rarity,” said the author of the discovery. Baptiste Journeau, author of the study. – water and salts are well known to us in terrestrial conditions. But outside, it is total darkness. And now we see these planetary objects, which probably have connections that are familiar to us, but in very exotic conditions.