Using the interiors of planets using computer simulations, an international team of scientists takes a closer look at the unusual watery nuclei of Uranus and Neptune.
Their simulation enabled them to analyze the thermal and electrical processes at the core of the two ice giants, because these processes, according to a statement, are often physically impossible to reproduce in an experiment back on Earth.
The researchers hope that their simulations will shed new light on the formation and evolution of these ice giants, as well as their magnetic fields.
“Hydrogen and oxygen are the most abundant elements in the Universe, along with helium,” Federico Grasselli and Stefano Baroni of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, first and last author of the paper published in the journal Nature communication last month, explained in the statement.
“It is easy to deduce that water is one of the most important constituents of many celestial bodies. Ganymede and Europe, Jupiter’s satellites, and Enceladus, Saturn’s satellite, present icy surfaces under which oceans of water lie, “they added.” Neptune and Uranus are also likely to be composed primarily of water. “
Their simulations examine the thermal and electrical conductivity to the atomic scale for bare fractions of a nanosecond.
What they found was that the ice present in the cores of these giants is very different from the ice we are used to here on Earth. “In such exotic physical conditions, we can not think of ice as we are used to,” Grasselli and Baroni explain. “Even water is actually different, denser, with different molecules dissociated into positive and negative ions, carrying an electric charge.”
This “superionic water” is not very solid, nor is it a liquid – it’s somewhere in between. Hydrogen atoms run free, while the oxygen molecules are trapped in a “crystalline lattice.”
This would also mean that electrical conductivity of the water in the cores is much higher than originally thought – suggesting that these unusual ice sheets may have a large effect on the magnetic fields of the planets.
READ MORE: Scientists are investigating the strange, strange water in Uranus and Neptune [Space.com]
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