Strange Alien World Made of "Hot Ice"

David Shiga writes "The smallest planet ever seen passing in front of its parent star is a strange world of scorching hot ice, astronomers say. The 22-Earth-mass planet has been known since 2004, but recent observations of it passing in front of its parent star have allowed them to learn much more about it. It appears to be made mostly of water, but not in liquid form. The planet orbits so close to its parent star that its surface is a broiling 300 C, keeping any water there in vapor form. Beneath the atmosphere, the water is even hotter, but is at such high pressure because of the planet's large mass that it stays in a solid, "hot ice" form."

Comments

Re:Interesting.

[someone1234]

Yes, iirc it was already done. See Sandia Z machine.

Re:Interesting.

[Control Group]

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer as gleaned from the link above if people don't want to bother clicking: yes; the Z-machine at Sandia is able (at least) to form Ice VII.

Re:Water?

[ArcherB]

No, we have confirmed the existence of water on other planets in our own solar system. Even Jupiter has water vapor in its clouds and Europa is covered in it. Even comets have a bunch of it. It's liquid water that's harder to come by. We're not so much looking for water as much as we are looking for water that can harbor life.

Not ice

[markov_chain]

The solid/liquid phase transition line for water moves toward lower temperatures as pressure goes up, so ice shouldn't be able to form at 300C regardless of pressure. Other than the title there is no mention of this "hot ice." The relevant quote mentions something more reasonable, namely, the supercritical fluid phase:

and it is not even clear if any of the water could be in liquid form, although deep inside where the pressure goes up, there could be a region where the water is in a quasi-liquid state. "It could pass through a strange region where it's not quite solid and not quite liquid," she says.

Re:Not ice

[jimstapleton]

I belive that is only applicable for Ice I[h] (normal ice). One property for such phase transition diagrams is that the solid is less dense than the liquid, rather than the reverse being true. There are several crystaline (and possibly non-crystaline?) forms of ice, which are more dense than water at the same pressure. These types of ice wouldn't match that phase diagram and could exist.

Re:Not ice

[loafula]

there are actually 14 different types of solid water. my guess is they're talking about Amorphous ice ..wikipedia. Also, I believe the 300C temperature is that of the water vapour in the atmosphere.

Re:Water?

[MightyMartian]

One word: spectroscopy.

Ice Polymorphism

[Jabba_the_Butt]

A fantastic H2O Phase Diagram can be found here (http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html). At 300C (573 K) you can have ice; you just need a lot of pressure. That kind of pressure is in the several gigapascal range (x10^9 Pa, 1 GPa145,000 psi). Any ice that has a designation (e.g. Ice I, Ice Ih, Ice II, III, V, VII, X, etc.) has a set crystal structure. As you can see on the phase diagram you can have ice at very high temperatures if you have enough pressure. What is present on the planet mentioned in the article is strictly dependent on the pressure and temperature conditions there, which we do not really know.

Re:Interesting.

[eclectus]

The water at the bottom of the marianna's trench is very close to freezing, but in this case, the pressure is actually what keeps if from freezing. Water has a strange property where the liquid form can (at certain temp/pressures) have a greater density than the solid form (ice). This is why ice floats, and also what makes ice skates work (the pressure of the skate turns the top layer of ice into a thin film of water. If you compress ice at 0 degrees celsius it will turn into water, while compressing water at 100 degrees celsius will eventually result in hot ice. The phase diagram for H2O can be found here