This Ice Is Nearly As Hot As the Sun. Scientists Have Now Made It on Earth

By Elizabeth Howell, Live Science Contributor | April 20, 2018 03:07pm ET

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https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA5OS80NjAvb3JpZ2luYWwvc3VwZXJpb25pYy1pY2UuanBn

Time-integrated image of a laser-driven, high-pressure experiment to produce superionic ice.
Credit: M. Millot/E. Kowaluk/J.Wickboldt/LLNL/LLE/NIF

It's both solid and liquid, it's 60 times denser than ordinary water ice, and it forms at temperatures almost as hot as the sun's surface.

It's superionic ice — and for the first time, scientists have made it in the lab.

This high-pressure form of water ice has long been thought to exist in the interiors of Uranus and Neptune. But until now, its existence was only theoretical.

"Our work provides experimental evidence for superionic ice and shows that these predictions were not due to artifacts in the simulations, but actually captured the extraordinary behavior of water at those conditions," Marius Millot, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said in a statement from the laboratory. Millot was the leader author of a new study describing the work.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/62373-superionic-ice-lab-created.html