 Good afternoon. You're watching Research in Manoa here. I'm Ethan Allen, filling in his host for J. Fidel. With me today in the studio we have Dr. Bin Chen. Welcome. He's from the Hawaii Institute for Geology and Planetology. Geophysics and Planetology. Sorry. That's part of SOAS, the School for Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology. And we also have Xiao Jing Lai, who's a 30-year PhD student in that same group, I think. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Welcome. It's great to have you guys here. Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here. And we're gonna be talking about experimental simulations of planetary interior. So this is a pretty complex subject, it sounds like. Can you tell us what it's about in sort of big-picture simple terms? Yeah, we basically employ high pressure techniques compared with X-ray and the neutron laser techniques to probe material properties under high pressure and temperature conditions found in the Earth's planetary interior. So the tools we are using is like this. So we have diamond-angle cells and the molten-angle cells for generating high pressure and also high temperatures. Okay, this is because materials deep in the Earth are under a lot of very high pressure, very high temperature. Yeah. You need to know what those look like, what their properties are in order to understand them and understand if you're seeing them in the Earth. So you take small samples of them in this. And squeeze it to quite high pressure. Yeah. Excellent. Do you want to? Okay. So this is an example of diamond-angle cell. So we have two diamonds, but this is the corner, it's no diamond, but it's quite similar one. So we have, we polish the tip and to make a small cutlet and we can squeeze samples, squeeze samples. So we use two diamonds to squeeze samples like this. Excellent. Using diamond because it's very, very hard and doesn't compress. Yeah. And it's transparent to the... Ah, so you can also see your sample in it. Yeah, we can actually look under the microscope to see your sample and then we can probe the material properties of these samples under high pressure by x-ray or laser. Okay. And yeah, you can see how it is deforming and changing structurally. Yeah. So we will show some interesting videos about squeezing water into ice and the melt ice under high temperature. So this summer we have two visiting students coming to our group and then we have done some cool experiment about squeezing water into ice and also heated. And then the ice melt at high temperature and when we cool it down, so the ice recrystallize. So this type of ice is not the ice that you can normally found in your freezer. This is high pressure form of the ice. It has a different structure and then it has like even a property. Of course, it might exist in some other like icy sunlight or icy moons in the solar system. Interesting. It puts you to mind of Kurt Vonnegut's... Kurt Vonnegut with the author wrote a book about ice nine. Oh, we hope this isn't it. Yeah, everything we freeze. Keep it away from water if it is, right? Excellent. Excellent. So one of the things I know you focus on is carbon. Yeah. This probably just reveals my own ignorance about about geology. I thought there was a lot of silica minerals and iron core. I don't think of a lot of carbon deep in the earth. Where is the carbon? Why is it there? What's it doing? Why are you interested in it? Yeah, carbon. So carbon cycle is very important, like a subject to humankind. So the reason why we are here is because of carbon on the earth. So we are carbon forms. Yeah. So now there are a lot of controversy about carbon reservoirs or the carbon cycles in the earth's interior. How much gets in the atmosphere where it gets stored on earth and in earth, right? So what are the largest reservoirs in the earth's interior? So then what I might believe that, so from our data, I think the earth's core might be the largest reservoir of carbon in the deep earth. And then we know diamond that we use as our tools to generate the high pressure is a form of carbon as well. So it comes from the upper mantle or even the lower mantle. And then we can harvest this diamond and it can be used as a gem or we can use it as our research tools. Oh, okay. All right. Now we actually just had to show a little bit of talking about graphene, of course, another form of carbon. Carbon is certainly amazing stuff. It has multiples of properties. But yes, I can see if the carbon is being stored deep in the earth. It's presumably more secure. It's not going to be popping out into our atmosphere and contributing to global climate change so much, if there are ways. And I gather there are some very exciting new technologies that have some potential to be storing carbon in mineral deposits, take carbon dioxide and pump it down there. Does your work inform that work then? So our work is we are looking at even deeper. So we are looking at mostly the lower mantle or the core. And so that's some, so this is also the topic of Xiao Jin's like a PhD work. Yeah, okay. So my PhD work is about carbon in the earth's core. So the earth has outer liquid outer core and solid inner core. Right. And so we think because carbon has a very high solubility in iron. So we think when the earth core forms, so carbon can dissolve into the iron and sink into the center of the core. Yeah, so. So we always hear of it as being an iron core, but you're saying it's an iron carbon core basically? Yeah, yeah. So iron is the major element in the core, but there's some light element. Interesting. How much, I mean is it 1% carbon? Is it 10% carbon? Do you have a sense of that? That's our research. So we need to like compel the density of our data to the earth model to see what's. I see. So if you take little bits of iron, compress it there, look at it, look at the signals you get out of it, and then look at the outer core and the inner core, or you can maybe make some guesses as to how much. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I think it's important to know that the composition of the outer core, like how much carbon exists in the core, because we know that from the surface to the core, to the center of the earth. So you have a lot of carbon reservoirs in the atmosphere. So over like air, it has CO2 carbon dioxide, and then you have carbonate in the crust or in the mantle. Then you have diamond or graphite in the mantle as well. It's more, and then, so if we know the carbon content in the, or the carbon, the carbon content of the largest reservoir of iron in our planet, and we can understand how they interact between different layers of the earth, how they exchange carbon. Excellent, excellent. Perhaps we should, I think we have a few slides perhaps. Should we take a quick look at those? There we go. Okay. Maybe you'll tell us what's going on here. Okay. So this is about the experimental simulation of planetary interior. So Bin, do you want to talk? Yeah, I think so. If we look at this, the structure, the internal structure of the earth and the other planet or satellite, so we can see that they have very similar structure. It's all like an onion-like. Right. So you can, if you cut our earth into halves, you can find that our core actually exists 3,000, 3,000 kilometer deep. So, and then all the way up to 6,400 kilometer. So it has, our core has a size of the planet mouse. Okay. You can, here is, so to the right, you can see the mouse is about the size of the core. So that's like, so the nature and the dynamic of the core is quite important for humankind or for life in the earth. As we know that the liquid motion in the outer core drives the geodynamic and then finally generated the magnetic field that protect us from the radiation from the space. That's possibly part of the reason there's a high-form life on earth. Right, because we are protected, right. And then if we look at also this satellite, so Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and it has more than 60 moons. Right. And among them, the largest among them are Io, Europa, Ganymede and the crystal. So there's some interesting things about this satellite. Scientists have found that particularly for Ganymede and the crystal, there are a large amount of water or water ice exist in its interior. So in their interiors. Next slide. So this is the picture of Ganymede. So you can see the onion-like structure. So it has a hexagonal ice on the surface. It means the hexagonal ice is the ice you can find in the fritter or the snow. And people believe there's sub-ocean. Sub-surface. Oh yes, sub-surface ocean. And if you go deeper, you can find a different kind of ice. It's a tetragonal ice, ice-6. And then it has, then if you go even deeper, it has rocky mantle and iron core. Yeah. So you want to know like what kind of ice and... Right. If ice sinks and sits at the bottom of the ocean, it's very, very different than all ice, which floats, right? Ice-6 is a denser form of ice. Right. And then in our lab, we can actually squeeze water into ice. And ice, you can actually make ice-6. Yeah. Yeah. Drop it in water and it sinks. Very briefly before it melts, I assume. So this is another moon of Jupiter, a crystal. So it also has hexagonal ice on the surface. And people also believe there's a sub-surface ocean. And deeper because the pressure and temperature conditions are different. So they have monoclinic ice-5 and rock and tetragonal ice in the center. So this one is more like a mixture in the interior. So it's not... Yeah, because crystal, people believe that the crystal is only part of the differentiated, not like a enemy. A enemy is fully differentiated. Okay. Okay. And just because of the different way it formed and all, it's actually structured now differently. Yeah, I know. So this crystal is a farther away from Jupiter. Oh, so it's much less gravitational in fact than all. Okay. I gather they're actually sending a probe into Jupiter itself to learn more about its central Juno. Yeah. Right. That's gonna be intriguing. So, and I think we also now have a video, don't we? Yeah. We have too many to read. Okay. That'd be great. Okay, so in 2015, so it's often our mineral physics group show how to squeeze water into ice. So this is the poster about our high pressure press. So left hand is the multi-angle press. And on the table we can see all kinds of diamond MSL. In this picture, Bing was showing the elementary school student how to use the microscope to see the ice at room temperature in the diamond MSL. So this is a video. When we increase the pressure, we can see the ice growth. So it's on the microscope. So in this summer, we have two visiting students from University of Science and Technology of China. And one of them, the project is about like a modified heaters in the diamond MSL and do the ice melting test. So you can see here, the heater is about 600 degrees C. So when we can increase the temperature in the diamond MSL, so when we increase the temperature, you can see the ice melted. So you can see the cracks and the ice melted along the. So when we decrease the temperature, you can see the water recrystallized and it becomes larger and larger and eventually it will form one piece of ice. So this ice is different from the ice we can find in the refrigerator. Okay, excellent. On that note, we're going to take a quick break here. We'll be right back. I'm your host Ethan Allen here on research on Manoa. I fill in for Jay Fidel, Dr. Bin Chen, and Zhou Jing, what are with me today? We're talking about ice. All right. Hey, how are you doing? Welcome to the Bachi Talk. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm your co-host and we have a nice program here every Friday at one o'clock at the Tech Studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. Every Tuesday at noon, we talk about issues important to Hawaii's sustainability, the issues of conservation, renewable energy, land management, food and energy security, and other issues that are extremely important as the World Conservation Congress approaches in the first week of September and next year's World Youth Congress that's taking place here that's focusing on sustainability as well. Please tune in. Join us as we highlight all the good things that are happening to achieve sustainability in Hawaiʻi. Mahalo. And you're back with me, Mikanela, your host here on Research in Manoa. I'm filling in for Jay Fidel today. He's traveling. With me today are two fine researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Zhou Jing Lai is a third-year PhD student and Dr. Bin Chen is in the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. And we've been talking about how they figure out about the carbon deep in the center of the earth and also I guess in other planets. We had some interesting shots of some ice and different forms of ice you were talking about. But you've got a very intriguing device here that I got curious about, this hexagonal-looking piece here that seems to have a lot of little bits. Can you tell me about what this is and what it's doing? Yeah. So this is the type of device that we are using to generate high pressure and high temperature in our lab in the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. So this is a device called a mountain anvil assembly. So we put our samples at the center of this octahedron. And we put also the either graphite or metal furnace around it so that we can apply voltage and then to increase the temperature as well. So we place this octahedron inside the cavity that is formed by eight cubes. So each of these cubes has a chunked edge. So depending on the size of the edge, the smaller the size of the edge, the chunked edge, the larger, the higher pressure you can generate. And then we can just put eight cubes around it and then we so we also have a thermocouple to measure the temperature as well. And we put this G10, glue this G10 around these cubes and then place this whole cube to work a type of module and then this module will go in a hydraulic press. So we have a 2000 ton press in our lab and we can increase the pressure and then apply voltage to the furnace and then increase the temperature as well. So I will have some a few slides just showing what we do. I think we will have a movie first show what we do in our lab to prepare this mountain anvil assembly. All right. So what we're seeing here? I think this is already beaten. So this is a diamond anvil cell. So this is used for compressing water into ice and melt. So this is basically just working in two dimensions or one way of pressure. So my student is preparing for this mountain anvil press, model anvil assembly. So we can see that each cube has a chunky edge. Then we have our samples with thermocouple and furnace inside this octahedron. Then we place this octahedron in the cavity that is formed by these eight chunky cubes. Then we can just place eight cubes around the octahedron. So all this and then we can glue this G10 like I did to the cube and then place this mountain anvil assembly in the wedges and then we can place this whole worker type of module in this big press. So this is a very big press we have. It's a 2000 ton press and we can use the computer to control pressure and the temperature that we want to reach. At the same time, you can image the sample in the middle, right? Image the sample. Yeah, there's a certain type of device in six on the left. So we can do some imaging of the sample. So sometimes we travel to Chicago to do an experiment and this is an experimental setup called the Paris and Edinburgh press that we use for our viscose measurement. So you can see a sphere floating in the liquid. So this is a sapphire sphere that we place inside this Paris and Edinburgh cell sample to put this sphere in this iron nickel carbon mixture and then we compress this mixture using this Paris and Edinburgh press and we heat it up until the sample is molten and as soon as the sample is molten then we can see the probe sphere to float to the top. Make it through a signal that it's molten and presumably the rate which floats up tells you some things about properties. Yeah, but the viscosity, yeah. So if you cook some soups, right, at first it might be less viscous and it's easier to stir and then later it will become viscous and it's more difficult to stir. So that's the basic principle. If you have a viscous fluid then this probe sphere will float slowly. Right. If you have less viscous fluid then it will float very fast. So you need, in our case, this iron nickel carbon liquid has a very low viscosity, surprisingly. Very low viscosity. Yeah, it's only five times the viscosity of liquid water. Oh, yeah, so that's surprising. It sort of think almost intuitively that liquid iron would be very, very dense and very viscous. Yeah. But so that's why we needed this high-speed camera so we can like a high-speed camera like to 1,000 frames per second, the camera to catch the movement of the probe sphere. Excellent, excellent. And I guess we're back to seeing a couple of the Galilean satellites again, some different properties. Yeah, so this is about the ice. So as you can see, that the guanymi and the crystal has a large amount of water ice in its interior, close to 50%. Yeah, Io and Europa, they are closer to Jupiter. We have a little less ice. Although doesn't Europe have a lot of water on the surface, apparently? Yeah, yeah. But in the interior, it might not have as much ice and guanymi or crystal. So it's a sort of natural experiment in different forms of water, in different forms of ice. We call it the experimental simulation of planetary interior. We want to simulate the conditions found in the planetary interior and then we study the material properties. So we can provide a bridge between observation and model. So the people who do modeling need to use our data in order to have a more realistic model for the planetary interior. Exactly. So this is actually sort of a lot of the parallel then to this new Hawaii EPSCOR project ECOI where they both are measuring the characteristics and property of the ground water but also modeling the reservoirs of it. So the measurements inform the model and the model sort of informs what they should be measuring and you're sort of doing the same kind of thing except you're both looking very far out into the cosmos and also very, very deep into the planet. Excellent, excellent. This sounds like very, very exciting work. Let me ask you a little bit about the students in your lab. You get undergraduates, mostly graduate students. Yeah, so now I have two graduate students and then sometimes I will take a summer intern. So I have some messages to Hawaii kids. If you are interested in science, you're welcome to contact me. So I will show you how high-proof experiments are done and then I will let you to get your hands dirty. Actually, I know I used to when I worked at the University of Washington, I used to manage an REU research experience for undergraduate program and it was always fun to see the freshmen, sophomores come on in and work in a real lab. This was for many the first time they'd actually done real science. They'd been reading about science before but actually working with real machines and discovering that science isn't about the books, it's really about what you're doing and what you're finding and what you're observing and that can be very, very exciting for students. Now, frighten some of them, some of them immediately decide that they don't want to do science anymore and that's a good thing to learn, I think, in 10 weeks in a sense, right? Yeah, inquiry-based learning is most effective. Right, right. And it's another one that brings them right on into science. They suddenly realize that this sort of tedious learning they've been doing up to this point is only the surface of it and the fun stuff is to dig down in, begin to ask your own questions and figure out how to answer them, right? Yeah. Yeah, well, excellent. So what kinds of preparation would you suggest the student get if they want to want to move into this area? What sorts of courses would you think they should take? I wasn't able to understand the question I heard. Yeah, that's a, so for our high-pressure mineral physics, I think we need some quantitative skills, like you need to know mass 1-1 or 2-1 or 3-1-1 and physics and chemistry. Yeah, it's really a multidisciplinary field. So yeah, I think, so which is good. So you can actually explore the different areas in our field. You can, so mineral physics has some connection with biology as well and with physics with chemistry and also like geology. This is where all the hot science is happening, right, at these intersections now between the disciplines. Well, this is wonderful. This has been a very enriching conversation. I feel like I've learned a lot and I hope you've enjoyed explaining to a non-geophysicist what it is you do and why you do it. And I hope our audience has learned something too here from this. Again, Charging Lai and Bin Chen from both from the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH Manoa. Thank you so much for being here. Aloha. Thank you. Aloha. Cool, super.