Superionic Ice Inside Ice Giants

Deep inside Uranus and Neptune, ordinary water ice is squeezed and heated into a phase that exists nowhere on Earth's surface: superionic ice. This simulator renders a real 3D crystal lattice of oxygen atoms with mobile protons, and drives it through the solid, superionic and ionic-fluid regimes as you drag pressure and temperature sliders or jump to a planetary-interior preset. Live readouts track proton mobility, an estimated proton diffusion coefficient and an order-of-magnitude ionic conductivity, illustrating why a thin shell of this exotic ice — not a deep metallic core — is the leading explanation for the bizarrely tilted, off-centre magnetic fields Voyager 2 found at both ice giants.