NUMBER_TOKEN ice NUMBER_TOKEN is black electrically conductive and as dense as diamond when crushed to a certain point water disassociates into a lattice of oxygen atoms floating in a sea of freely flowing positively charged hydrogen ions creating an electric dynamo to our eyes this form of ice seems alien even corrupted but with such water worlds as uranus and neptune likely to outnumber every other planet in the universe ice NUMBER_TOKEN could be the true representative form of water in NUMBER_TOKEN scientists of the lawrence livermore national laboratory successfully created superionic ice after modeling the interiors of uranus and neptune if the models are correct then ice NUMBER_TOKEN would comprise the majority of these planets masses when you consider that the total amount of water in the solar system outside of uranus and neptune is about half the amount in either one it's fair to say that ice NUMBER_TOKEN is the commonest form of water in our or indeed any solar system but there is yet another form of ice that may have taken even ice NUMBER_TOKEN's crown many of the so-called super earths those that straddle the line between terrestrial worlds like our own and ice giants like neptune not earth's with slightly more water but worlds in which water comprises up to NUMBER_TOKEN percent their entire mass as opposed to NUMBER_TOKEN for earth such worlds such as gliese NUMBER_TOKENb would have oceans tens or even hundreds of times deeper than earth's and a combination of immense pressure and higher gravity would condense the bottom layers of water into high pressure forms of ice specifically ice NUMBER_TOKEN a form of ice under NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN atmospheres that better resembles gem crystal and iNUMBER_TOKEN cubic form of ice that only forms the pressures of NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN atmospheres models suggest that up to a third of all exoplanets may possess such ice but to be frank that's not what we want however watery such worlds may be they will never be home to sail the surface of such a world would be to endure a fog of scalding steam and near venus level temperatures the closest to home we could expect to find such ice would be in the sunless depths of jupiter's moon europa what we want to see are those precious jewels those touched enough by water to serve as cradles for life but not so much as to drown it forever despite surveys bringing the number of known exoplanets into the thousands of all masses and orbits so far the golden trinity in our search for earth too earth mass water and in the habitable zone has not been found the closest we've come so far was in NUMBER_TOKEN when two independent studies detected water in the atmosphere of kNUMBER_TOKENb planet orbiting a red dwarf NUMBER_TOKEN light years away with an orbital period of just NUMBER_TOKEN days kNUMBER_TOKENb nonetheless lies within its star's habitable zone with a stellar irradiance almost identical to that of earth unfortunately it is also eight times earth's mass its density and just twice that of water suggests it is an ocean world but with the next generation of telescopes coming online seems only a matter of time before the universe of water unveils to us another of its most precious creations and so like the great river oceanis we have circled the world and returned to where we started the great cosmic ocean it seems as
START_SELFPROMO_TOKEN and so like the great river oceanis we have circled the world and returned to where we started the great cosmic ocean it seems as END_SELFPROMO_TOKEN