Hydrogen ions (pink) flow within a solid lattice of oxygen in superionic ice S. Hamel/M. Millot/J.Wickboldt/LLNL/NIF
Neptune and Uranus have hearts of ice, but not like any ice you’ve seen before. Now, a team of researchers has created for the first time the bizarre stuff that might occupy the frigid cores of these ice giants, potentially explaining their weird magnetic fields which can flip on and off daily.
It’s called superionic ice. It only occurs at temperatures matching those on the Sun, and pressures exceeding a million Earth atmospheres– precisely the environment predicted at the centre of ice giants.…
