Posted on 05/16/2007 10:23:01 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
An observatory in southern Switzerland has detected the first planet made of ice. Located outside the solar system it is about the same size as Neptune. The find was made by a team of four astronomers from the St Luc observatory in canton Valais and Geneva University, with Lady Luck on their side... Using a 24-inch telescope, the team measured the light coming from a star 30 light years away, which is not very far in astronomical terms. Team members found it was dimmed a little for about an hour, meaning that this was the time when the planet was passing in front of its star. "It's a planet with a radius four times that of the Earth. It's orbiting very close to its star – a few million kilometres, so it's a very hot planet made mainly of hot ice with a temperature of more than 300 degrees," Mallmann explained... The planet already has a name or rather a number - Gliese 436 b. One of the smallest extrasolar planets, it was discovered orbiting the star Gliese 436 in 2004. An orbit takes less than three days.
(Excerpt) Read more at swissinfo.org ...
mentioned in the Catastrophism ‘blog on FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f—bloggers/1607979/posts?page=22#22
Transits occur when a planet appears to pass in front of its star as seen from Earth. New observations reveal that the planet around the star GJ 436 is just four times as wide as Earth -- the smallest transiting planet yet known (Illustration: NASA/ESA/G Bacon)
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Talk about your global warming. You can't even get a cold drink there.
What is “Hot Ice”?
Actually (and I know it's not the same thing) "hot ice" is the term we used to apply to what is generally called "dry ice." I think it was because it is so much colder than H2O ice that the initial sensation if you touch it feels like a burn.
Apparently an exotic form of solid water under extreme pressure. Not really “ice” as we know it, however.
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=27689
Exotic ice
But now, a team led by Michael Gillon of Geneva University in Switzerland have observed the planet transiting its host star using a telescope at the Observatoire Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (OFXB) in Saint-Luc, Switzerland.
They have been able to measure the planet's width, which provides clues to its composition and structure. It turns out to be about 50,000 kilometres wide, roughly four times the width of Earth and about the size of Neptune.
The planet is therefore too compact to be made mostly of hydrogen gas, like Jupiter, the researchers say, but not compact enough to be a rocky 'super Earth', as some had speculated. Instead, they believe it must be made mostly of an exotic form of water.
Although the parent star is much cooler than the Sun, the planet orbits 13 times closer to the star than Mercury's orbit around the Sun. That means the surface must be a blazing hot 300° C or more, keeping water in its atmosphere in vapor form.
But the high pressures in the planet's interior would compress the water so much that it would stay solid even at hundreds of degrees Celsius – the expected temperatures inside the planet. There are a variety of exotic 'hot ice' states possible in such conditions, with names like 'Ice VII' and 'Ice X'
Seems like wild speculation to me, why couldn't it be a light rock substance or rock that's not as densely packed as it is in earth?
in addition to the helpful comments above...
Unsolved mysteries of water in its liquid and glassy phases
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000JPCM...12..403S
8 Phases of Water
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00505.htm
There are plenty of (at least dwarf) planets in the Solar System made primarily out of ice.
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to space we go [whistling starts]
Phase diagram of water revisedSupercomputer simulations by two Sandia researchers have significantly altered the theoretical diagram universally used by scientists to understand the characteristics of water at extreme temperatures and pressures. The new computational model also expands the known range of water's electrical conductivity. The Sandia theoretical work showed that phase boundaries for "metallic water" -- water with its electrons able to migrate like a metal's -- should be lowered from 7,000 to 4,000 kelvin and from 250 to 100 gigapascals. (A phase boundary describes conditions at which materials change state -- think water changing to steam or ice, or in the present instance, water -- in its pure state an electrical insulator -- becoming a conductor.) The lowered boundary is sure to revise astronomers' calculations of the strength of the magnetic cores of gas-giant planets like Neptune. Because the planet's temperatures and pressures lie partly in the revised sector, its electrically conducting water probably contributes to its magnetic field, formerly thought to be generated only by the planet's core. The calculations agree with experimental measurements in research led by Peter Celliers of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
PhysOrg
Thursday, October 5, 2006
The planet orbiting GJ 436 is thought to be made mostly of water in an exotic 'hot ice' form. The composition of its atmosphere is uncertain but may contain hydrogen, helium and water vapour (Illustration: F Pont/Geneva University)
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