Exploring Extrasolar Planets in the Laboratory

Abstract:

A new generation of extreme matter experiments is underway, recreating conditions produced by the crushing forces of gravity, deep inside sub-stellar objects (e.g., brown dwarfs), and extrasolar planets. Today’s laboratory experiments can produce exquisite pressure control and with atomic resolution probes to produce and accurately characterize new states of matter with atoms brought together closer than the deBroglie wavelength or the Bohr radius. This is the realm where core electron chemistry is plausible and the nature of atoms themselves change. While experience for such matter is limited on Earth, these conditions exist in the deep interiors of planets throughout the universe. We will describe a variety of recent experimental results for constituents of terrestrial, giant and water planets, as well as plans for such experiments into the next several years. We describe recent measurements for the EOSs, melt curves and electrical conductivity for several terrestrial planet constituents including Fe, MgSiO3, and MgO to 2 TPa (20 Mbar) and several thousand Kelvin.