Final Report: "Recreating Planet Cores in the Laboratory"
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
The grant supported a combination of experimental and theoretical research characterizing materials at high pressures (above 0.1-1 TPa = 1-10 million atmospheres) and modest temperatures (below 20,000-100,000 K). This is the “warm dense” (sub-nuclear) regime relevant to understanding the properties of planets, and also to characterizing the chemical bonding forces between atoms. As such, the experiments provide important validation and extensions of theoretical simulations based on quantum mechanics, and offer new insights into the nature and evolution of planets, including the thousands of recently discovered extra-solar planets. In particular, our experiments have documented that: 1) helium can separate from hydrogen at conditions existing inside Jupiter and Saturn, providing much of these planets’ internal energy hence observed luminosities; 2) water ice is likely present in a superionic state with mobile protons inside Uranus and Neptune; 3) rock (oxides) can become metallic at conditions inside “super-Earths” and other large planets, thereby contributing to their magnetic fields; and 4) the “statistical atom” regime that provides the theoretical foundation for characterizing materials at planetary and astrophysical conditions is now accessible to experimental testing.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0010864
- OSTI ID:
- 1361129
- Report Number(s):
- Final Report: DE-SC0010864
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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