Icy Giant Planets tagged posts

Icy Giant Planets in the Laboratory

Even under extremely high pressure, such as those in the interior of Neptune or Uranus, there are stable crystal structures of carbon (orange) and hydrogen (gray). This discovery by HZDR researchers reveals new possibilities for the inner structure of the ice giants.
Credit: HZDR / J. Vorberger

Researchers use plastics to better understand what happens inside planets. Giant planets like Uranus and Neptune may contain much less free hydrogen than previously assumed. Researchers from the German Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) drove shock waves through two different types of plastic to reach the same temperatures and pressures present inside such planets, and observed the behavior using ultra-strong X-ray laser pulses...

Read More