Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at More Than 2,000 °C
... What?
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Researchers have successfully created an exotic form of water ice under extreme conditions that would normally vaporize the substance entirely. Scientists led by physicist Alexis Forestier at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission subjected water samples to pressures exceeding 2.3 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure while heating them to temperatures approaching 2,630 kelvins. Under such extraordinary circumstances, water behaves in counterintuitive ways that defy conventional expectations about the substance’s physical states.
The team identified a previously theorized but never definitively observed crystal structure called hexagonal close-packed ice, or hcp ice. This configuration represents one of numerous superionic ice phases, where oxygen atoms remain locked in a rigid crystalline pattern while hydrogen nuclei move freely throughout the structure, similar to particles in a liquid. By gradually increasing pressure and temperature across multiple experiments, researchers documented the transformation between different ice phases, observing hcp ice become increasingly dominant at the highest pressures tested.
The discovery holds significant implications for understanding planetary interiors. Superionic ice is believed to exist within the depths of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune, where its unique electrical properties may influence how these worlds generate their distinctive magnetic fields. The researchers’ identification of the hcp phase suggests that electrical conductivity properties differ between various superionic ice configurations, potentially requiring scientists to revise current models of how energy and materials circulate within distant planetary bodies.
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Originally reported by Sciencealert →
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