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Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at More Than 2,000 °C
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- DeepHorus
Scientists have successfully created a new form of exotic ice under extreme conditions mirroring the interiors of giant planets. This breakthrough was achieved by a team led by physicist Alexis Forestier of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. The experiment subjected water samples to staggering pressures up to 2.3 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure and temperatures as high as 2,357 degrees Celsius.
Under normal Earth conditions, water behaves anomalously, but its quirks become even more extreme under different pressures and temperatures. At the center of Earth, pressure is around 360 gigapascals, but the researchers applied up to 230 gigapascals. They used diamond tips to crush the water and lasers to heat it to thousands of degrees, simulating the environment inside ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune.
The team then used synchrotron X-rays to analyze the crystal structure of the resulting ice. They observed a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phase, a configuration long theorized but never unambiguously confirmed experimentally. This new ice is a form of superionic ice, where oxygen atoms form a rigid lattice while hydrogen nuclei diffuse through it like a liquid.
As the pressure and temperature increased during the experiment, the ice transitioned from a previously known face-centered cubic (fcc) superionic phase to this new hcp phase. For instance, at 155 gigapascals and 2,000 kelvins, the signal was a mix of both phases. At 197 gigapascals and 2,250 kelvins, the hcp signature became dominant.
This discovery is significant because superionic ice is believed to exist deep within Uranus and Neptune. Its unique properties could help explain the unusual magnetic fields generated by these distant worlds. The research provides crucial experimental data to understand the exotic matter states that may predominate throughout the universe.
The experiment demonstrates that water can exist as a dense, hot ice under conditions previously thought to mandate a gaseous state. By confirming the predicted hcp superionic phase, scientists have expanded the known map of water's phase diagram. This work opens new avenues for planetary science and our understanding of fundamental material behavior under extreme conditions.
