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Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds

Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are the most common planet types in our galaxy. A subset of these planets is predicted to be water worlds, bodies that are rich in water and poor in hydrogen gas. The interior structures of water worlds have been assumed to consist of water surrounding a rocky mantle an...

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Autores principales: Kovačević, Tanja, González-Cataldo, Felipe, Stewart, Sarah T., Militzer, Burkhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9338078/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35906271
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16816-w
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author Kovačević, Tanja
González-Cataldo, Felipe
Stewart, Sarah T.
Militzer, Burkhard
author_facet Kovačević, Tanja
González-Cataldo, Felipe
Stewart, Sarah T.
Militzer, Burkhard
author_sort Kovačević, Tanja
collection PubMed
description Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are the most common planet types in our galaxy. A subset of these planets is predicted to be water worlds, bodies that are rich in water and poor in hydrogen gas. The interior structures of water worlds have been assumed to consist of water surrounding a rocky mantle and iron core. In small planets, water and rock form distinct layers with limited incorporation of water into silicate phases, but these materials may interact differently during the growth and evolution of water worlds due to greater interior pressures and temperatures. Here, we use density functional molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) simulations to study the miscibility and interactions of enstatite (MgSiO(3)), a major end-member silicate phase, and water (H(2)O) at extreme conditions in water world interiors. We explore pressures ranging from 30 to 120 GPa and temperatures from 500 to 8000 K. Our results demonstrate that enstatite and water are miscible in all proportions if the temperature exceeds the melting point of MgSiO(3). Furthermore, we performed smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to demonstrate that the conditions necessary for rock-water miscibility are reached during giant impacts between water-rich bodies of 0.7–4.7 Earth masses. Our simulations lead to water worlds that include a mixed layer of rock and water.
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spelling pubmed-93380782022-07-31 Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds Kovačević, Tanja González-Cataldo, Felipe Stewart, Sarah T. Militzer, Burkhard Sci Rep Article Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are the most common planet types in our galaxy. A subset of these planets is predicted to be water worlds, bodies that are rich in water and poor in hydrogen gas. The interior structures of water worlds have been assumed to consist of water surrounding a rocky mantle and iron core. In small planets, water and rock form distinct layers with limited incorporation of water into silicate phases, but these materials may interact differently during the growth and evolution of water worlds due to greater interior pressures and temperatures. Here, we use density functional molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) simulations to study the miscibility and interactions of enstatite (MgSiO(3)), a major end-member silicate phase, and water (H(2)O) at extreme conditions in water world interiors. We explore pressures ranging from 30 to 120 GPa and temperatures from 500 to 8000 K. Our results demonstrate that enstatite and water are miscible in all proportions if the temperature exceeds the melting point of MgSiO(3). Furthermore, we performed smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to demonstrate that the conditions necessary for rock-water miscibility are reached during giant impacts between water-rich bodies of 0.7–4.7 Earth masses. Our simulations lead to water worlds that include a mixed layer of rock and water. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9338078/ /pubmed/35906271 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16816-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Kovačević, Tanja
González-Cataldo, Felipe
Stewart, Sarah T.
Militzer, Burkhard
Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
title Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
title_full Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
title_fullStr Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
title_full_unstemmed Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
title_short Miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
title_sort miscibility of rock and ice in the interiors of water worlds
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9338078/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35906271
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16816-w
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