Effects of pressure on aqueous chemical equilibria at subzero temperatures with applications to Europa

To demonstrate the usefulness of this low-temperature, high-pressure model, we examined two hypothetical cases for Europa. Case 1 dealt with the ice cover of Europa, where we asked the question: How far above the putative ocean in the ice layer could we expect to find thermodynamically stable brine pockets that could serve as habitats for life? For a hypothetical nonconvecting 20 km icy shell, this potential life zone only extends 2.8 km into the icy shell before the eutectic is reached. For the case of a nonconvecting icy shell, the cold surface of Europa precludes stable aqueous phases (habitats for life) anywhere near the surface. Case 2 compared chemical equilibria at 1 bar (based on previous work) with a more realistic 1460 bars of pressure at the base of a 100 km Europan ocean. A pressure of 1460 bars, compared to 1 bar, caused a 12 K decrease in the temperature at which ice first formed and a 11 K increase in the temperature at which MgSO4·12H2O first formed. Remarkably, there was only a 1.2 K decrease in the eutectic temperatures between 1 and 1460 bars of pressure. Chemical systems and their response to pressure depend, ultimately, on the volumetric properties of individual constituents, which makes every system response highly individualistic.