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Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Huake Xueba for clue delivery! This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: SF Chinese (ID: kexuejiaodian), author: SF

This is a Voyager 2 image of Neptune. Beneath Neptune's blue atmosphere, there may be a frozen mantle, and there may also be a liquid ocean beneath the mantle. You might not think that Neptune's interior is so hot and pressurized that liquid water freezes. We all know when we are young that ice melts when heated, and when we get older, we know that above zero degrees Celsius ice melts into water. Presumably we all take these phenomena for granted. But now I tell you: this is not the case, the temperature above 0℃, ice does not necessarily melt.

Wen| Merlin

You are not mistaken, ice may not melt into water when the temperature rises above 0℃. This isn't a joke, and it's not a sci-fi movie. It's what happens in our real lives--ice that scientists have discovered can survive temperatures approaching 5000 degrees Celsius without melting.

Ice doesn't melt at 5000? In 2018, scientists created the first piece of "super ion ice" in the laboratory-the 18th form of water discovered by scientists. In 2019, they confirmed the existence of superion ice and the existence of crystal structure of superion ice through experiments.

Physicists at Stanford University have discovered a new form of superionic ice. Arianna Gleason's team sandwiched a thin layer of water between two layers of diamonds and bombarded it with a powerful laser beam to raise its temperature and pressure.

The experimental setup Gleason's team used in their study.（Gleason A.E.et al., 2022) After further analysis and comparison with the 2019 discovery, Gleason's team found that Ice 18 has a different crystal structure than Ice 17, confirming that Ice 18 is a new form of superionic ice. Moreover, Ice 18 has higher conductivity than Ice 17.

Why does water freeze at 5000℃? This starts with the crystal structure of super-ionic ice. As we probably know, water molecules are arrow-shaped molecules made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. When water freezes, both hydrogen and oxygen atoms are held in place.

Superionic ice, on the other hand, is different: oxygen atoms in its molecules are locked in solid cubic lattices, while hydrogen atoms are free to move. It is this crystal structure that makes the super-ionic ice more conductive, because the freely moving hydrogen atoms act as free electrons in the metal. Moreover, it is this crystal structure that gives the super-ionic ice a higher melting point, allowing it to remain unmelted at nearly 5000 ° C.

Gleason believes the discovery of ICE 18 and its conductive properties may help explain the anomalous magnetic field Voyager 2 discovered during its flyby of Uranus and Neptune, two ice giants in the solar system.

How are the anomalous magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune generated? From 1986 to 1989, Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune one after another. After exploration, it was found that the magnetic fields of these two ice giants were unusual, and they both experienced tilt and twist. Over the past 30 years, scientists have proposed various explanations, but they have not been able to understand this magnetic anomaly phenomenon.

According to Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction, changing electric fields produce magnetic fields. Some scientists believe that the reason why the Earth has a magnetic field is because the outer core is liquid, and the flow of ions in it generates a magnetic field. Therefore, we can speculate that ice giants such as Neptune have varying electric fields due to the presence of liquid matter, which in turn generates their magnetic fields. If Neptune's interior is more complex, with superionic ice in addition to liquid matter, the situation is even more complicated. Multiple inner layers of different conductivity are likely to alter Neptune's magnetic field.

In Gleason's team's study, scientists pointed out that ice giants like Neptune may have multiple layers of different conductivity, including two layers of superionic ice. The conductivity of the super-ionic ice layer in the inner layer of the planet is higher than that of the ionic liquid layer and gaseous material layer in the outer layer. Such a complex layered structure may have caused large changes in the magnetic field of ice giants like Neptune.（Gleason A.E.et al., 2022）

Gleason suggests that Neptune's magnetic field may be strange because there are two superionic ice layers with different conductivities inside it. And so it is likely that other ice giants like Neptune will have the same effect.

References:

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04687-6

Nanosecond X-ray diffraction of shock-compressed superionic water ice | Nature

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