Crossword clues for volatiles
Wiktionary
n. 1 The volatile part of a petroleum fraction 2 The volatile parts of a planet's atmosphere or crust
Wikipedia
In planetary science, volatiles are the group of chemical elements and chemical compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet's or moon's crust and/or atmosphere. Examples include nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, methane and sulfur dioxide. In astrogeology, these compounds, in their solid state, often comprise large proportions of the crusts of moons and dwarf planets.
In contrast with volatiles, elements and compounds with high boiling points are known as refractory substances.
Planetary scientists often classify volatiles with exceptionally low melting points, such as hydrogen and helium, as gases (as in gas giant), whereas those volatiles with melting points above about 100 K are referred to as ices. The terms "gas" and "ice" in this context can apply to compounds that may be solids, liquids or gases. Thus, Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, and Uranus and Neptune are ice giants, even though the vast majority of the "gas" and "ice" in their interiors is a hot, highly dense fluid that gets denser as the center of the planet is approached.
The Moon is very low in volatiles: its crust contains oxygen chemically bound into the rocks (in, for example, silicates), but negligible amounts of hydrogen, nitrogen, or carbon.
Usage examples of "volatiles".
Captain Park’s fleet had spent its brief time here in a frantic survey of the system, and in dredging a few kilotonnes of volatiles from the frozen world.
Without the usual mix of native volatiles and ores, fleet life would be very uncomfortable indeed.
The Emergent boss gave a benign smile and continued: “There really is only one place in all the OnOff system where volatiles exist in any quantity—and that is on the Spider world itself.
Given time, they would have had all the volatiles and ore they needed.
The planet had a stony, undifferentiated interior, but the surface was swaddled with enough volatiles for oceans and a friendly atmosphere.
Tiny puffs of vapor sputtered around their boots when they walked through drifts of airsnow and the volatiles came in contact with the less well insulated fabric of their coveralls.
And if the volatiles get into sunlight, there’ll be a whole new problem.
The junior officers, including Diem, demanded that the rockpile be dispersed during the Relight, the volatiles piled on the shadowside of the biggest diamond.
For this Relight, we should have moved the volatiles behind a single rock and taken it further out.
In the deep shadows of the rockpile, there was a further jumble: the lashed-down ships and temps and volatiles refineries, hiding against the light that would soon storm out of the sky.
From the looks of the volatiles distillery, it would be a long time before they had enough hydrogen to boost even one vehicle up to ram speed.
The little volatiles plant gulped in airsnow and water ice and ground diamond.
Now it was in sunlight, the volatiles of the earlier years moved or boiled away.
The volatiles distillery sat at the end of its slow trek across the dark side of the rockpile.
Around her lay the sweeping drifts of their remaining hoard of volatiles: airsnow and ocean ice from the surface of Arachna.