14 DAY TRIAL // Modeling the evolution of the Universe at times depends on some of the most unbelievable things, such as for example determining by how much water shrinks on ice giants, under the planets' huge gravitational pull. A new study shows that current estimates of this process are wrong.
This discovery might lead astrophysicists back to the drawing board, and force them to create a new model of how the entire Cosmos evolved. All of this hassle is brought on by water compression.
In our daily lives, the concept has no practical applications. Water is known to be largely incompressible, but it does react (albeit slowly) to huge gravitational pulls. An accurate determination of how much deformation it undergoes is essential for complex scientific models of the Universe.
What the new investigation demonstrated is that ice giant planets appear to have more water volume than initially calculated. This means that the space water trapped under high density and pressure takes up on a celestial body was also miscalculated.
The research was carried out by experts with the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), in the United States, and the University of Rostock, in Germany. Researchers with the team found that the compressibility of water is overestimated by as much as 30 percent.
Details of the research appear in a paper entitled “Probing the Interior of the Ice Giants,” which was published in the February 27 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Physical Review Letters.
“Our results question science’s understanding of the internal structure of these planets and should require revisiting essentially all the modeling of ice giants within and outside our solar system,” SNL expert and lead study author, Marcus Knudson, explains.
The new measurements of water compressibility, carried out at the SNL Z accelerator, are about 10 times more precise than any other. The instrument is capable of recreating the conditions water experiences within ice giants for limited periods of time (less than a nanosecond).
“We took advantage of recent, more precise methods to measure the speed of the shock wave moving through the water sample by measuring the Doppler shift of laser light reflected from the moving shock front, to 0.1 percent accuracy,” Knudson explains.
“Reducing uncertainty on the composition of planetary systems by precisely measuring the equation of state of water at extreme conditions can only help us understand how these systems formed,” he concludes.