| Description |
Water is thought to be a major constituent of celestial bodies formed far enough from their host star for H2O to condense. The transport properties of water at extreme pT-conditions govern the evolution of water-rich planets and moons, such as the ice giants (Uranus and Neptune), or satellites possessing rigid icy shells and interior water oceans, like Europa and Enceladus. New theoretical and data-analysis methods have been recently developed to estimate accurate transport coefficients of electronically-gapped materials from ab initio equilibrium molecular dynamics and the Green-Kubo theory of linear response [1-3]. In this talk, we report on recent results on the application of these methods to heat and charge transport in water at the extreme pT-conditions occurring in the interior of water-rich planets and moons, in all the different relevant phases (partially dissociated liquid, solid, and super-ionic) [4].
These results are finally employed to build a model of the thermal evolution of Uranus, which accounts for its hitherto poorly understood very low luminosity [5]. |