Earth's inner core is 'superionic'

[Nereus]

Earth's inner core is 'superionic', a state of matter somewhere between solid and liquid, study suggests

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/202 ... /100813000

We've known for a while that Earth's deepest depths, its "solid iron" inner core, isn't made of pure iron — and now scientists say it might not be solid either.

Simulations by a team of researchers in China suggest our planet's innards are somewhere between solid and liquid in a "superionic" state.

The research was published today in the journal Nature.

Yu He, a physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, said the calculations were "a new starting point to understand the inner core".

This study, and others like it, Dr He added, might one day help earth scientists solve some fundamental but complex problems, such as when the inner core started to take shape.

But the new study can't completely explain all the inner core's quirks.

Why states of matter matter

On the surface of the Earth, we generally deal with three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas.

Take water, for instance. As ice in a cool drink, water molecules are arranged in a regular, 3D crystal. When that ice melts to become liquid water, those molecules can now move around, but are still in close proximity.

And as a gas, like the water vapour that gives humid days their oppressive stickiness, those mobile water molecules are free to move far away from each other.

But when substances are subjected to intense pressure or heat, they can switch into other, weirder states of matter.

Such as superionic matter, which is somewhere between liquid and solid.

In superionic water, molecules split apart into oxygen and hydrogen atoms.

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