Pressure-temperature Phase Diagram of the Earth
Eriita Jones, Charles Lineweaver

TL;DR
This study models Earth's pressure-temperature phase diagram to identify the deepest liquid water environments and estimate the extent of habitable zones within Earth's interior.
Contribution
It provides a detailed P-T phase diagram of Earth, highlighting the depth of liquid water and the distribution of inhabited versus uninhabited liquid water regions.
Findings
Deepest liquid water at ~75 km depth
Approximately 3.5% of Earth's volume contains liquid water
About 12% of liquid water volume is inhabited by life
Abstract
Based on a pressure-temperature (P-T) phase diagram model of the Earth, Jones & Lineweaver (2010) described uninhabited terrestrial liquid water. Our model represents the atmosphere, surface, oceans and interior of the Earth - allowing the range of P-T conditions in terrestrial environments to be compared to the phase regime of liquid water. Here we present an overview and additional results from the Earth model on the location of the deepest liquid water on Earth and the maximum possible extent of the terrestrial biosphere. The intersection of liquid water and terrestrial phase space indicates that the deepest liquid water environments in the lithosphere occur at a depth of ~ 75 km. 3.5 % of the volume of the Earth is above 75 km depth. Considering the 3.5 % of the volume of the Earth where liquid water exists, ~ 12% of this volume is inhabited by life while the remaining ~ 88% is…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsHigh-pressure geophysics and materials · Planetary Science and Exploration · Geological and Geochemical Analysis
