Scientists Are Studying An Alien Version Of Water Inside Neptune And Uranus.
Scientists probe the mysterious, alien water inside of Neptune and Uranus.
Researchers are studying an alien version of water inside the new, icy interiors of Neptune and Uranus. In the new study, scientists have devised a technical computer model and used it to peer inside the ice giants Neptune and Uranus.
With this tool, the team examined the electrical conductivity and thermal of the unusual water inside of these two planets. In simulating these natural processes on the teeny-tiny atomic scale, the researchers hope that this latest model will disclose information about the icy bodies' internal structure, magnetic fields, how they emerged, and precisely how adult they are.
In studying Neptune and Uranus with this model, the researchers, who stem of the International School to Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy and the University of California at Los Angeles, decided that the two planets are possible primarily comprised of water in some form and Uranus might even have a frozen core, due to a SISSA statement.
"Oxygen and Hydrogen are the most basic elements in the Universe, concomitantly with Helium. It is simple to deduce that water is one of the major components of many celestial bodies," the researchers said in the identical statement.
The team observed at three different phases of water that could exist in these planets interiors: liquid, ice, and superionic. But, as the researchers explained in the description, water on an alien planetoid is far different from the water on the Earth.
"In such exotic physical situation, we cannot think of ice as we are used to," SISSA professors and study Stefano Baroni and co-authors Federico Grasselli said in the description. "Even water is really different, denser, with several molecules divided into negative and positive ions, thus providing an electrical charge. Superionic water lies somewhere between solid phases and the liquid."
So what did they find regarding the water inside of those ice giants?
The researchers hypothesize, they described in the statement, that Uranus might truly have frozen core. This would describe why the planet isn't very luminous, as a frozen core would mean that very small heat would move towards the planet's surface, due to the announcement.
The scientists also discovered that superionic water in Neptune and Uranus is extra electrically conductive than water on Earth, and they assume that superionic water could compose a huge portion of the dense inner layers of these gas giants. These results advance our understanding of exactly how the two bodies are composed and how they came to be, the study advises.
As the two scientists said in the announcement, "Thermal and electrical conduction dictates a "planet's history, how and when it was developed, how it cooled down. It is, therefore, crucial to examine them with the appropriate tools, like the one we have developed."