{"id":236159,"date":"2026-04-29T18:22:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/the-depths-of-neptune-and-uranus-may-be-superionic"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:22:27","slug":"the-depths-of-neptune-and-uranus-may-be-superionic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/the-depths-of-neptune-and-uranus-may-be-superionic","title":{"rendered":"The depths of Neptune and Uranus may be \u2018superionic\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-depths-of-neptune-and-uranus-may-be-superionic.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie\u2019s Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-70603-z\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Communications<\/i><\/a>, predicts that a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride exists under the extreme pressures and temperatures found deep inside these outer solar system bodies.<\/p>\n<p>More than 6,000 exoplanets have been discovered. As this number grows, astronomers, planetary scientists, and Earth scientists are crossing disciplinary boundaries\u2014combining observation, experimentation, and theory\u2014to define and probe the factors that help us understand the dynamic processes that shape them, including the generation of magnetic fields.<\/p>\n<p>As such, interest has grown in understanding the processes that are occurring deep beneath the surfaces of planets and moons in our own solar system, which can inform our understanding of planetary dynamics, and even planetary habitability in more-distant neighborhoods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie\u2019s Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in Nature Communications, predicts that a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride exists under the extreme pressures and temperatures found [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}