New kind of metal in the deep Earth
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
Basically we don't have the science to describe the behavior of a planetary core made up of this type of material! Is that cool or what.
It just happens to be very complicated. You're right in that it's a mixture of E&M, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics. Whether it becomes computationally prohibitive to model is something I am unsure of, but may be possible with some simplifying assumptions.
Edit: after a bit more research, I found a paper where, if I follow correctly, they are laying out a framework for creating such a model: http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.1611
At least in the open literature I haven't seen CFD models that consider the influence of elements beyond a few centimeters, the magnetic forces in the Earth's core move elements meters, if not kilometers, away so the date sets do get very strange, and you have to mix in that if they cool to much or you hit an eddy current and the pressure drops the current gets cut off and the electrodynamic forces stop.
Its the latter bit that seems so mind bending to me. MHD simulations start with a plasma and it can be conducting throughout the simulation in all places.
CFD simulations deal with the forces between elements that express as viscosity, turbulent, and laminar flows.
MHD assumes that elements in the flow are always affected by the electro-magnetic forces in play, CFD doesn't account for electro-magnetic forces.
CFD assumes that the elements in the flow are only affected by the forces of nearby elements and not the actions or state of elements that are further away.
An FeO simulation has to combine them somehow, and account for whorls and eddies converting elements from the MHD domain into the CFD domain and then back again.
Anyway, I am looking forward to the papers on this stuff. It combines two areas I enjoy, complex systems and physics!
Many more than just solid, liquid, gas.
.
See http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html
My ice goes up to ice-eleven (XI) ?
probably very rare in nature.The probability of them occurring naturally in cosmic-scale events is also extremely small. For all practical purposes, probably for at least a thousand year to come, these elements do not exist naturally.
Its composition is similar to Earth's, and I assume that it's big enough to have similar pressures and temperatures closer to the core?
What if gravity is an emergent result from the compression of matter? The greater the compression, the greater the density and gravity?
But as for gravity, no. Gravity is a function of mass. Compressing a body into a smaller space will not increase the gravity you experience at a given distance from the mass's center of gravity (though it will allow you to get closer to the center of gravity). If you magically replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, the planets would continue their orbits undisturbed — even though a black hole's singularity is infinitely dense and the Sun is less dense than the Earth on average.
(Mass is almost certainly caused by the interaction between some quantum particles and the Higgs field. I'm not clear on how that deforms spacetime, though.)
Edit: I should refresh the page before posting.
The "position" of the inner electron orbitals is mostly determined by quantum rules (it is more complicated, but think that because of something like the Pauli Exclusion Principle the electrons can’t be very close together).
The conductivity of the material depends on the farther electrons, but it is not possible to bring them closer to the core because that space is "filled" with the inner orbitals. The farther orbitals of the atoms get mixed and are transformed into bands, which are not localized in an atom, but span all the crystal.
With more pressure, the nuclear cores get closer, but not very much. The main change is how the farther electron orbitals interact. So at some distance it is possible that some orbital get mixed and at other distance another orbital get mixed. So at some distance the bands are empty or full, and at another distance the bands are partially filled. And that changes the conductivity of the material.
So probabbly the correct way to begin the article is: "in Earth's deep interior squeeze atoms so closely together that their electrons (orbitals) interact very differently".