Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at Over 2,000°C
Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at More Than 2000°C
By squeezing water between diamond tips to 2.3 million atmospheres and heating it with lasers to 2,630 kelvins, researchers produced a never-before-confirmed phase of superionic ice called hexagonal close-packed (hcp) ice. In this bizarre state, oxygen atoms stay locked in a crystal lattice while hydrogen nuclei flow like a liquid. The discovery could reshape models of Uranus and Neptune's lopsided magnetic fields.
At those temperatures, you'd normally expect water to emphatically be a gas – even partially sundered into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen atoms. But something interesting happens at the astronomical pressures found deep inside planets.
- vitiral
> under preposterous pressures up to 2.3 million atmospheres, and tremendous temperatures up to 2,630 kelvins (2,357 degrees Celsius, or 4,274 degrees Fahrenheit).
Whew, so not Ice-nine