Because the interiors of
icy planetary bodies might also be salty, due to interactions between the ice and the surrounding rocks or a liquid ocean, lead author Livia Eleonora Bove of the CNRS & Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France and the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne in Switzerland and the rest of the team studied the effects of salts on the formation of the ice X from ice VII.
«These findings could challenge our current thinking on the physics occurring in the interiors of
icy planetary bodies,» Goncharov said.
Not exact matches
The new study helps scientists expand their knowledge of what might be possible on
planetary bodies in our solar system, said Kelsi Singer, a postdoctoral researcher who studies
icy worlds at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and was not involved with the new research.
The new findings are observational evidence supporting the idea that
icy bodies are also present in other
planetary systems, and have survived throughout the history of the star's evolution.
In January, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, two
planetary scientists at the California Institute of Technology, speculated on the existence of a ninth planet based on an odd alignment of six distant
icy bodies.
If these rays from the dying star were to wash over a once - frozen moon or exoplanet, the
planetary body's
icy layer would melt into liquid: setting the stage for life to form in a flowing ocean.
In particular, I will focus on planets on eccentric orbits, not only because typical exoplanetary systems have been found to contain these, but also because their interactions with debris disks theoretically facilitates the transport of
icy bodies within the habitable zone of
planetary systems.
The observations suggest that the dust was created by collisions in a Edgeworth - Kuiper - like belt of
icy bodies, and that the orbital asymmetry could be an indication that the dust is being shepherded by an unseen
planetary companion — among other explanations (Eiroa et al, 2010).
Both objects formed among the rocky and
icy protoplanets beyond the Solar System's «ice line» now located around 2.7 AUs, but the early development of Jupiter apparently prevented such large protoplanets between the gas giant and planet Mars from agglomerating into even bigger
planetary bodies, by sweeping many into pulverizing collisions as well as slinging them into the Sun or Oort Cloud, or even beyond Sol's gravitational reach altogether.
The new findings support the notion that belts of
icy bodies are also in other
planetary systems, and have persisted throughout their star's development.