* Astronomy

Scientists in Italy have discovered that carbon dioxide can form a glass, the British journal Nature reports on Thursday.
Under extremely high pressures of up to half a million atmospheres, molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) form a glassy crystalline solid, they found.

Carbon is a member of the same chemical group as silicon and germanium.
The new material has been baptised amorphous carbonia, or a-CO2.
At present, a-CO2 is a curiosity because it cannot be tested or used outside the pressure chamber. The CO2 that in these extraordinary conditions takes up a chaotic "amorphous" structure, becoming glass, reverts to orderly molecules of CO2 under decompression.
The discovery of a-CO2 raises intriguing questions about the huge gas planets in the outer Solar System.
In theory, the enormous pressures of Jupiter, Saturn and the other gas giants could turn the planetary interior into hard, stiff a-carbonia.
The paper is lead-authored by Federico Gorelli and Mario Santoro of the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS), based in Florence, Italy.

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