It has finally proven that there is a strange type of ice that appears to live deep in the oceans of alien planets.
For the first time, researchers have it We directly observed a type of hybrid phase of water called plastic ice.formed at high temperatures and pressures, exhibiting the properties of both solid ice and liquid water. Observations were reported on February 12th Nature, It may help researchers to better understand the internal architecture and processes of our solar system and other worlds beyond.
Plastic ice “is somewhere between liquid and crystals. You can imagine it softening when squeezed,” says Libya Bove, a physicist at the University of Sapienza in Rome. She says that it is called plastic ice and refers to a facility that scientists call plasticity because it is molded or deformed more easily than typical crystalline ice. “As if you can do it [squeeze] It came out of the hole, even if it was still solid. ”
Most of the Earth’s surface, including ice cubes, glaciers and snow, is made up of water molecules arranged in hexagonal lattices that resemble honeycombs. Scientists classify this common ice as ice lh. However, in addition to ice inH, there are at least 20 other known ice phases that form at different pressures and temperature conditions. At pressures above 20,000 bars (20,000 kilograms per square inch), the ice grating is compressed into Ice VII. ICE VII has been found to be trapped in diamonds born from the Earth’s mantle and is thought to occur within other planets as well. And Kurt Vonnegut fans may be interested to hear that ICE IX was discovered in 1996Although it lacks the scary ability to freeze the entire ocean.
There is also a phase of ice that has been theorized to be present. More than 15 years ago, computer simulations revealed that when the ICE VII was heated and exposed to extreme pressure, That individual water molecule should start spinning freelylike a liquid while occupying the fixed position as if it were a fixed position. The hypothetical phase shared the same cubic crystal structure as the ICE VII, which became known as Plastic Ice VII. However, since experiments at such high pressures were technically unfeasible at the time, solid evidence of the existence of plastic ice escaped scientists for years.
In a new study, Bove and his colleagues used relatively new tools Laue-Langevin Institute In Grenoble, France is able to measure the motion of molecules under extreme pressure. In the experiment, they pointed to a neutron beam to the water sample, and subjected the sample to a temperature up to 326°C and a bar of up to 60,000. When incoming neutrons interacted with the water molecules in the sample, they acquired or lost energy, depending on how much the water molecules were moving and rotating before they were scattered towards the detector. By measuring the energy of scattered neutrons, Bove’s team was able to characterize the movement of molecules and identify the phases that were formed.
Above 177°C, at around 30,000 bars (approximately 28 times the pressure at the deepest point of the Earth’s ocean), Bove’s team has created a cubic crystal lattice in which water molecules rotate quickly like liquid water. I observed the stages of the ice I held. They identified the phase as a plastic ice VII and ultimately confirmed its presence.
However, the observed details diverged from predictions. Instead of rotating freely, the water molecules appeared to rotate in jerky motion. When a molecule rotates, it breaks a hydrogen bond with one neighbor, and quickly rotates to combine with another neighbor, explains Bove.
Baptist Journaux, a planetary scientist at Washington University in Seattle, could have been present in the early formation stages of Europe, Titan and other ice moons in our solar system before all water escaped from the high pressure interiors. It has sex. New observations, he says, could help researchers connect stories of how these moons evolved into today’s oceanic world.
And beyond our solar system, strange ice may fall to the bottom of the giant oceans of the exoplanet. By investigating how plastic ICE VII easily incorporates salt into its lattice, whether the presence of a strange phase enhances the exchange of salt between the deplanetary seabed and the seas mentioned above. It helps to judge. “It actually feeds the ocean with more nutrients.”
