Instruments track the results as high-intensity lasers set off a shock wave in a sample of magnesium oxide.
Eugene Kowaluk, University of Rochester
To understand the conditions that prevail on these exoplanets, we may have to rethink the properties of some of their constituent materials which will be found at pressures and temperatures unlike any we've seen. To get a better understanding of this, researchers have exposed a simple metal oxide (magnesium oxide, MgO) to extremely high pressures and temperatures. They found two distinct phase transitions: one that shrank the material's volume by seven percent and a second that converted it into a metallic liquid, sufficient to drive the dynamos that generate magnetic fields.
In order to study the material under extreme conditions, the authors of the paper lined up a sample of the MgO next to a material that would absorb light from a high-powered laser. When the laser vaporized that material, it set off a shock wave that propagated through the MgO, heating it and raising the pressure dramatically. Changes in the MgO were tracked with an interferometer which followed the progress of the shock wave, and a pyrometer which measured how much heat was given off as the shock wave moved through the material.
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