Odd things happen inside planets, where familiar materials are subjected to extreme pressures and heat.
  • theodewere@kbin.social
    271·
    1 year ago

    And if towards its core that planet had two superionic layers of differing conductivity, as Gleason and colleagues suggest Neptune might contain, then the magnetic field generated by the outer liquid layer would interact with each of them differently, making things stranger still.

    this is badass… there might be multiple layers made of different phases of this superionic H2O “metal”, which generates convection currents of this stuff… Neptune and Uranus are weird inside…

  • possibly a cat@lemmy.ml
    11·
    1 year ago

    I wonder if there’s life in an ice giant out there somewhere. It may sound wild, but there’s a lot of unexplored physics at those extremes that could interact in surprising ways.

    • Basilisk@mtgzone.comEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      The real question is if there is something that can exist and “live” in the parts of the universe that are so unusual and beyond our experience, would we even recognize what it is if we saw it?

      • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, like https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/nasa-may-have-unknowingly-found-and-killed-alien-life-on-mars-50-years-ago-scientist-claims

        But Schulze-Makuch believes most of the experiments may have produced skewed results because they used too much water. (The labeled release, pyrolytic release and gas exchange experiments all involved adding water to the soil.)

        “Since Earth is a water planet, it seemed reasonable that adding water might coax life to show itself in the extremely dry Martian environment,” Schulze-Makuch wrote. “In hindsight, it is possible that approach was too much of a good thing.” In very dry Earth environments, such as the Atacama Desert in Chile, there are extreme microbes that can thrive by hiding in hygroscopic rocks, which are extremely salty and draw in tiny amounts of water from the air surrounding them. These rocks are present on Mars, which does have some level of humidity that could hypothetically sustain such microbes. […]

        But too much water can be deadly to these tiny organisms. In a 2018 study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers found that extreme floods in the Atacama Desert had killed up to 85% of indigenous microbes that could not adapt to wetter conditions.

        Therefore, adding water to any potential microbes in the Viking soil samples may have been equivalent to stranding humans in the middle of an ocean: Both need water to survive, but in the wrong concentrations, it can be deadly to them, Schulze-Makuch wrote.

        It was also discussed on Lemmy. Wish we could link to posts.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Maybe, we understand that self replicating chemical reactions are a thing, that the thing they are is basically a step away from life, and our scientists are looking for such things. Maybe the lay person won’t notice, but scientists may

  • elouboub@kbin.social
    52·
    1 year ago

    I mean, at the extremes, a bunch of things start acting weird. Cool gas down enough and it turns liquid, heat it up enough and you get plasma (?), put it under enough pressure and you get liquid (?), send strong currents through materials and they start acting weird too.

    What makes this ice though? the structure?

  • Punkster812@kbin.social
    31·
    1 year ago

    So if we can produce this, can this have a practical use like in freezers/coolers. Or even in drinks? How cold is Ice XVIII and XIX?