How can liquid water exist on ocean worlds enclosed by icy shells? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of researchers led by Texas A&M University investigated how liquid water could remain stable on ocean worlds like Jupiter’s moon, Europa. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for not only liquid water stability, but for conditions of life as we know it to exist beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers conducted a series of laboratory experiments involving the lowest temperatures that salty liquid water could remain stable in a vacuum environment. In the end, the researchers found liquid water was stable depending on specific pressures and temperatures but was primarily determined based on the molecular makeup of the substance, which they experimented with several. Additionally, they coined a new phrase called cenotectic, which they term as the absolute minimum temperature that liquid water could maintain its stability.
This study comes as NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is en route to the Jupiter system after being launched in October 2024 from NASA’s Kenney Space Center. The primary goal of the mission is to determine the habitability potential of Europa given its vast liquid water ocean that exists beneath its icy shell, for which is estimated to contain more than three times the liquid water as the Earth.
“Laboratory measurements of liquid stability, and notably the lowest temperature possible (the newly-defined cenotectic), combined with mission results, will allow us to fully constrain how habitable the cold and deep oceans of our solar system are, and also what their final fate will be when the moons or planets have cooled down entirely,” said Dr. Baptiste Journaux, who is an assistant research professor at the University of Washington and a co-author on the study.
What new discoveries will scientists make about ocean worlds and their potential habitability in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Nature Communications, Texas A&M University, ScienceDaily
Featured Image: Jupiter's moon, Europa taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill)
