More research is needed to fully understand silica’s role in our body, but it’s thought to have the following effects: It can support bone formation and maintenanceĪlthough calcium and vitamin D get most of the attention when it comes to bone health, a 2013 study in International Journal of Endocrinology reported that silica can increase bone mineral density and strength. Silica is available as tablets and caplets, often extracted from horsetail herb. Traditionally, horsetail has been used to treat wounds, strengthen connective tissue and support the kidneys. There’s lots of evidence that its water-soluble form, which is found in certain plants – including the herb horsetail 3 – is highly beneficial to health. In short, it’s everywhere – but how exactly can it help your health?Īlthough it’s now known to be an important trace element, historically silica’s actually been considered more harmful than helpful to our health – for example, it’s known that when inhaled in its crystalline form, over time, silica can cause serious lung disease. Silica has multiple uses in industry – for example, in concrete – and in foods, including as an anti-caking agent. Its forms include emerald, quartz, clay and glass. Silica makes up over a quarter of the planet’s crust and can be found in most rocks, clays and sands. Silica is a natural compound, found all around us in nature. The cyan-yellow gradual change region beneath the white dashed curves represents the possible region for the silica-water compound predicted in this work.Find out all about silica, including what it does, the benefits to taking it and how much you might need What is silica and what does it do? Both models with compact (right) and diluted/fuzzy (left) cores are shown. The gray and cyan regions represent the H / He atmosphere and the “hot ice” layer composed by water, ammonia, and methane, respectively, the yellow regions represent rocky cores. (c) Sketches of the internal structures of Uranus and Neptune based on the U2 and N1 models from Ref. . The open triangles are the states of core-mantle boundaries for each model. For each planet, two different models from Ref. marked by solid and dashed-dotted lines are presented.
The blue and magenta lines represent interior isentropic profiles of Uranus and Neptune, respectively. The black dashed lines are phase boundaries. Each solid symbol represents an AIMD simulation. Phase diagrams of Si 2 O 5 H 2 (a) and SiO 2 H 2 (b). Phase diagrams of silica-water and silica-hydrogen compounds and their impact on the interior structure of Uranus and Neptune. These unexpected physical and chemical properties of the most common natural materials at high pressure offer key clues to understand some abstruse issues including demixing and erosion of the core in giant planets, and shed light on building reliable models for solar giants and exoplanets. Therefore, these superionic silica-water and silica-hydrogen compounds could be regarded as important components of the deep mantle or core of giants, which also provides an alternative origin for their anomalous magnetic fields. Further simulations reveal that, at high pressure and high temperature conditions corresponding to the interiors of Uranus and Neptune, these compounds exhibit superionic behavior, in which protons diffuse freely like liquid while the silicon and oxygen framework is fixed as solid. Here, using advanced crystal structure searches and first-principles calculations in the Si − O − H system, we find that a silica-water compound ( SiO 2 ) 2 ( H 2 O ) and a silica-hydrogen compound SiO 2 H 2 can exist under high pressures above 450 and 650 GPa, respectively. Thus, it is of fundamental importance to investigate their states and possible reactions under the planetary conditions. Silica, water, and hydrogen are known to be the major components of celestial bodies, and have significant influence on the formation and evolution of giant planets, such as Uranus and Neptune.