Scientists have discovered that there is ice deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus and want to find out what form it takes and how it behaves. They cannot dig for it and transport it all the way back to Earth, so they do the next best thing: recreate those extreme conditions in the lab.

That’s exactly what a team of scientists led by Alexis Forestier from the CEA, France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, did. What they discovered could help us better understand the strange magnetic fields and deep interior layers of these distant worlds.

The weird world of hot ice On those planets, ice is not like the frozen cubes you put into a cold drink. It enters a weird state known as superionic ice because of the immense heat and pressure it is under. In this exotic phase, oxygen atoms lock into a solid grid while hydrogen nuclei flow freely through it like a liquid, allowing it to conduct electricity. Scientists already knew this hot, conducting ice existed, but they did not know what specific crystal shapes it formed.