The ice giants of our solar system are bizarre worlds of extremes … if you were born on one of Uranus’ poles, for example, you would be in middle age at sunset and a very old, 84-year-old before it was time for a second sunrise and By the time of a second breakfast on Neptune, a dark, cold world, hit by supersonic winds that can reach 1500 kilometers per hour, you would be 165. But their true stories, which go back billions of years, lie trapped in their waters.
“Hydrogen and oxygen are the most common elements in the Universe, along with helium. It is easy to deduce that water is one of the most important constituents of many celestial bodies. Ganymede and Europe, satellites of Jupiter, and Enceladus, satellite of Saturn, present icy surfaces beneath which lie oceans of water. Neptune and Uranus are also likely to be composed primarily of water, ”said Federico Grasselli and Stefano Baroni, scientists at SISSA in Trieste and UCLA who modeled the interior of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, thanks to computer simulations. their water on microscopic scales to unlock stories that go back billions of years.
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New theoretical method
A new theoretical method allows them to analyze thermal and electrical processes that occur under physical conditions that are often impossible to reproduce experimentally, with a much easier and inexpensive approach. In this study, the scientists analyzed the conduction of electricity and heat of water under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, such as those found in ice giant planets, as well as in many exoplanets out there. Investigating the phenomena that occur beneath their surface is actually the key to understanding the evolution of these celestial bodies, determining their age, and shedding light on the geometry and evolution of their magnetic fields.
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“Our knowledge of planetary interiors” – they add – “is based on the functions of the planet’s surface and magnetic field, which are themselves influenced by the physical characteristics of their internal structure, such as the transport of energy , mass and charge through the internal intermediate layer.Therefore, we have developed a theoretical and computational method to calculate the thermal and electrical conductivity of water, in the phases and conditions that occur in such celestial bodies, starting from cutting simulations about the microscopic dynamics of several hundred atoms and the recording of the quantum nature of electrons without further ad-hoc approximation.By simulating the atomic scale for fractions of a nanosecond, we are able to understand what happened to enormous masses on time scales of billions of years. “
Superionic – “Not the ice or water we are on earth”
The scientists analyzed three different phases of water: ice, liquid, and superionic, under the extreme temperature and pressure conditions typical of the inner layers of these planets. Black, hot, Superionic ice is a bizarre form of water that can encompass most of the giant icy planets in the entire universe.
The discovery of superionic ice, Joshua Skokol reports for Quanta who was not involved in the study, first theoretically predicted more than 30 years ago, “could potentially solve the puzzle of what giant icy planets like Uranus and Neptune are made of. now thought gaseous, mixed-chemical outer shells, a liquid layer of ionized water beneath it, a solid layer of superionic ice that forms most of its interior, and rocky centers. “
“It really is a new state of affairs”
Superionic ice is not quite a new phase of water, says physicist Livia Bove of the National Center for Scientific Research of France and Pierre and Marie Curie University, “It really is a new state of affairs,” she said, “something rather spectacular is. “
Grasselli and Baroni explain: ‘In such exotic physical conditions we can not think of ice as we are used to. Even water is actually different, denser, with different molecules dissociated into positive and negative ions, thus carrying an electric charge.
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Superionic water lies somewhere between the liquid and solid phases: the oxygen atoms of the H2O molecule are organized in a crystalline lattice, while hydrogen atoms diffuse freely as in a charged liquid. “The study of thermal and electrical currents generated by water in these three different forms is essential to shed light on many unresolved issues.
Existence of a Frozen Core
The two scientists also state that ‘internal electric currents are at the base of the planet’s magnetic field. If we understand what the former stream is like, we can learn a lot more about the latter. And not only that. “The thermal and electric transport coefficients dictate the history of the planet, how and when it was formed, how it cooled. It is therefore crucial to analyze them with the appropriate tools, such as the ones we have developed. In particular, the thermal conductivity properties that emerge from our study hypothesize that the existence of a frozen nucleus may explain the anomalous low luminosity of Uranus as a result of an extremely low heat flow from the interior to the surface. “
Furthermore, the electrical conductivity found for the superionic phase is much greater than assumed in earlier models of magnetic field generation in Uranus and Neptune. Since superionic water is thought to dominate the dense and slow planetary layers beneath the convective liquid region where its magnetic field is generated, this new evidence could have a major impact on the study of the geometry and evolution of the magnetic fields of the two planets.
The Daily Galaxy, Sam Cabot, via SISSA and Quanta
Image Credit: NASA Ice Worlds
