We know ‘icy’ Neptune is partially comprised of water molecules but until now we have had little means to test how water behaves in the extreme conditions that Neptune presents.
This is about to change as an international group of physicists draw up plans to use the new Facility for Antiprotons and Ion Research (FAIR) in Germany, which will be ready in 2015, to expose water molecules to heavy ion beams and thereby generate the same level of pressure on the water molecules that they experience within the very inhospitable core of Neptune.
The new plans being published in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society) today explain how using high energy uranium beams in the future German facility is going to enable researchers to create conditions that push water molecules into a ‘superionic’ state and thereby observe water in conditions never before replicated.
The predicted ‘superionic’ state is an exotic hybrid phase of water composed of an oxygen lattice and a hydrogen liquid which under ambient conditions form stable H2O molecules in an ice lattice or in a liquid.
A total of 15 European, Russian and Chinese researchers from GSI Helmholzzentrun für Schwerionenforschung, Universität Rostock, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Universite Paris-Sud, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Science explain how the use of the new heavy ion beams can simulate pressures up to several million times greater than anything on the surface of the Earth.
The researchers suggest that research into this ‘superionic’ state could be of paramount importance for the understanding of the magnetic field of Neptune and Uranus, which are very different from that of the Earth’s.
The researchers cite the past decade’s progress in the technology of strongly bunched, well focused, high quality intense heavy ion beams as the enabling force for this experiment – such beams will be made available when construction of FAIR is complete.
The heavy ion beams, which will be generated by the new particle accelerator at FAIR, will have advantages over other methods of exposing particles to high pressure, such as high explosives, gas guns, lasers, or pulsed power, because they will be able to apply a more uniform and more targeted pressure on the water molecules.
The researchers write, “The FAIR accelerator facilities will provide very powerful high quality heavy ion beams with unprecedented intensities. Extensive theoretical work on beam matter heating over the past decade has shown that the ion beams that will be generated at FAIR will be a very unique and very efficient tool to study High Energy Density Particles in those regions of the parameter space that are not so easy to access with the traditional method.”
The article will be permanently free to read from today at http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/7/073022
Particles and violins collide on physicsworld.com
As icons go, Albert Einstein was one of a kind – making so many remarkable contributions to so many different areas of physics. But in addition to his scientific achievements, much is made of Einstein’s colourful personal life, not least his life-long passion for music.
That’s the theme of a unique collaboration between Jack Liebeck, recently named young British classical performer of the year at the 2010 Classical BRIT awards, and particle physicist Brian Foster of the University of Oxford. Jack and Brian have created an innovative lecture and musical performance that explores Einstein’s legacy to physics and the role music played in his life. The show, called “Einstein’s Universe”, is currently touring concert halls and schools across the UK.
Now, an exclusive video report on physicsworld.com offers online viewers the chance to see the duo in action at a recent performance in St George’s concert hall in Bristol. In a wide-ranging interview filmed at the event, Jack and Brian reflect on the ongoing success of the show and ponder a deeper link between physics and music.
Jack says, “They complement each other as disciplines. It’s very true that a lot of physicists, and generally many scientists and mathematicians, love playing music. I think it’s difficult to put a finger on the exact link but I think there should be a link between reading a code on a page and turning it into music and, in the day-to-day life of trying to work out what’s going on in their particular disciplines, looking at the codes that come through and deciphering how things are put together.”
Brian suggests a more workaday link between Einstein and his music: “We have indications from [Einstein’s] wife, in a letter, that he often would come out of his study, when they lived in Berlin, scratch his head and play a few chords on the piano, think a bit more, and then go back into his study and write down some of the new ideas he’d had.
“It is often the case in science that when one thinks deeply about something, has a break doing something different like playing an instrument, this can somehow crystallise one’s thoughts in a new direction and that certainly was an important way that Einstein thought about physics.”
To see further interviews with Jack and Brian or to watch them perform Mozart’s violin sonata K296 in C Major, click here.