Scientists have managed to get stable hot black ice for the first time, which probably exists in the bowels of other planets.
Water has many more incredible shapes than most of us can imagine. So, in the course of another experiment, scientists managed to get a rather bizarre shape - hot black ice (or in another way superionic ice), which can presumably exist in the bowels of planets such as Uranus and Neptune.
Another experiment over water and its results
Engineers from Argonne National Laboratory decided to conduct an experiment over the water. Scientists have decided to get a phase of water known as superionic ice, which forms at extremely high temperatures and pressures.
As a result of this transition, water molecules are separated into hydrogen and oxygen ions. Then oxygen ions form a lattice resembling a cube, around which hydrogen ions move almost unhindered.
All this gives the formed ice a fairly high conductivity, low density and dark color.
The theory of the existence of this ice has been worked out for several decades, and the first real experiments began to be carried out in laboratories only in the 1990s. The first success came in 2019, when it was possible to obtain superionic ice in the laboratory, albeit for only a few fractions of a second.
In another experiment, scientists still managed to get hot black ice. To do this, the scientists initially applied high pressure by squeezing a sample of water into a so-called diamond anvil. Then the water was heated using lasers and only then, using a high-energy source X-ray light called Advanced Photon Source (APS), scientists have studied the resulting design.
So experiments have shown that scientists really managed to get superionic ice, and he began to form even at temperatures from 627 to 1627 degrees Celsius and at a pressure of 20 gigapascals.
Curiously, the theory predicted that hot black ice could only form at significantly higher pressures. This came as a surprise to scientists.
In addition, the engineers also quite accurately established the properties of hot black ice, which in its essence represents a new form of matter.
Obtaining superionic ice in the laboratory will allow scientists to better understand how planets form and even more accurately understand where to look for extraterrestrial life.
It is also believed that such ice is quite common on planets such as Uranus and Neptune, and it is likely that it is the accumulations of such ice that can generate the magnetic fields of these planets.
Scientists still have to carry out a huge number of experiments to understand how hot black ice behaves in different conditions. Well, the scientists shared the results of the work already done on the pages of the journal Nature Physics.
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