Скачать или смотреть The Compass Lectures — Mysterious Magnetic Fields, Machine Learning, NASA's Newest Flagship Mission

The Compass Lectures, Spring 2023

Lecture 8: Mysterious Magnetic Fields, Machine Learning, and NASA's Newest Flagship Mission: Exploring the Deep Interiors of Uranus and Neptune
Speaker: Kyla de Villa, Graduate Student in Earth and Planetary Science
Date: Friday, April 28, 2023

Talk Description: Little is truly known of the interiors our solar system's most distant planets, Uranus and Neptune. Their interior compositions and structures determine the shape and intensity of their magnetic fields, which data from Voyager II suggest are unusual compared to many other planetary bodies in our solar system. Following the success of the Juno and Cassini missions to gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, NASA's next flagship mission will visit Uranus to further study the planet's gravitational and magnetic fields! However, to model a planet's interior, this spacecraft data must be paired with studies of how planetary materials behave under extreme pressures and temperatures. Using supercomputers to perform quantum mechanical and machine learning simulations, we study the behaviors of planetary ices (mixtures of water, ammonia, and methane). We find that at sufficient pressures and temperatures, hydrogen-bearing compounds become superionic, a mixed liquid/solid state with heightened conductivity. As the interiors of Uranus and Neptune are expected to be hydrogen-rich, superionic materials may be significant to their magnetic field generation.

Speaker Bio: Kyla is a PhD Student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science here at UC Berkeley. She also completed her undergraduate degrees here at UC Berkeley, in chemistry and planetary science! Her research focuses on studying the properties of planetary materials under the high temperatures and pressures found in planetary interiors, using atomistic simulations. She particularly focuses on studying properties of planetary ices (mixtures of ammonia, water, and methane), with hopes of advancing our knowledge of the structure of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune.

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The Compass Lecture Series is a collection of research talks given by Berkeley physical sciences faculty or PhD candidates who are about to graduate. These talks are unique in the Berkeley Physics Department in that they are designed for an undergraduate audience. The goal of the lecture series is to introduce undergrads to as many areas of research as possible using language and physics concepts they can understand. Undergraduates interview and introduce the speakers and manage the question-and-answer period that follows the talk. The lectures take place on the Fridays at 3:10 PM in 375 Physics North, UC Berkeley.
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Visit our website: https://compass.berkeley.edu/