Researchers analyzed the conduction of electricity and heat of water under extreme temperature and pressure conditions, such as those that occur inside ice-giant planets as well as in many exo-planets outside of it.
Simulating the atomic scale for fractions of a nanosecond enables an understanding of what happened to enormous masses on time scales of billions of years.
Ice, liquid or superionic: a totally different water
The scholars analyzed three different phases of water: ice, liquid, and superionic, under the extreme temperature-and-pressure conditions typical of the internal layers of these planets. Grasselli and Baroni explain: “In such exotic physical conditions, we cannot think of ice as we are used to. Even water is actually different, denser, with several molecules dissociated into positive and negative ions, thus carrying an electrical charge. Superionic water lies somewhere between the liquid and solid phases: the oxygen atoms of the H2O molecule are organized in a crystalline lattice, while hydrogen atoms diffuse freely like in a charged fluid”. The study of thermal and electrical currents generated by the water in these three different forms is essential to shed light on many unsolved issues.
Transport of heat and electricity to understand the past and present The two scientists also state that “internal electrical currents are at the base of the Planet’s magnetic field. If we understand how the former flow, we can learn a lot more about the latter”. And not only that. “The thermal and electrical transport coefficients dictate the planet’s history, how and when it was formed, how it cooled down. It is therefore crucial to analyze them with the appropriate tools, like the one we have developed.
The electrical conductivity found for the superionic phase is far larger than assumed in previous models of magnetic field generation in Uranus and Neptune. Since superionic water is thought to dominate the dense and sluggish planetary layers below the convective fluid region where their magnetic field is generated, this new evidence could have a great impact on the study of the geometry and evolution of the magnetic fields of the two planets.
Abstract
The impact of the inner structure and thermal history of planets on their observable features, such as luminosity or magnetic field, crucially depends on the poorly known heat and charge transport properties of their internal layers. The thermal and electric conductivities of different phases of water (liquid, solid, and super-ionic) occurring in the interior of ice giant planets, such as Uranus or Neptune, are evaluated from equilibrium ab initio molecular dynamics, leveraging recent progress in the theory and data analysis of transport in extended systems. The implications of our findings on the evolution models of the ice giants are briefly discussed.
SOURCES- Nature Communications, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
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I wonder if energy could be harvested in some wise…
I agree.
Both electron and proton are fermions with spin 1/2, and protons are small enough to delocalize, similar to electrons. There are at least theoretical studies showing proton delocalization in hydrogen bonds. So I expect this can be analyzed in similar sold-state physics terms as has been done for electrons in metals and semiconductors. Find the band structure, Fermi energy, etc. And probably, impurities of nitrogen, carbon, and (much less commonly) flourine, would have similar effects to dopants in semiconductors.
edit: Now consider LiH or some other metal hydride compressed to a similar level. Now you have both electron and proton plasma inside a solid metallic lattice…
Computer simulations are great in a pinch, but I’d still like to send some kind of survivable probe right into Jupiter and Saturn. Get some readings from a few thousand kilometers down.
Curious; a phase of water where the oxygen and hydrogen act like the ions and electrons in regular metals. I had never heard of this superionic phase of matter, though I had heard of some 10–15 different phases of water ice and metallic hydrogen.