What a year! Very grateful for the recognition of all the hard work accomplished by our team at UW and abroad over the last few years by the IAPWS. More exciting things to come very soon!

These results are fascinating both for fundamental thermodynamics as we are defining a novel invariant point, but also in Planetary science as they provide an absolute thermodynamic limit of ocean stability and potential habitability of water-rich worlds.

We also discuss the novel concept of the "cenotectic ocean", or end-game ocean in water-rich planetary bodies which would be controlled by the concentration and temperature of the cenotectic.

This has direct implications for planetary science, that we explore in our publication. First, it provides an absolute thermodynamic limit for icy moons and exoplanets icy crust thickness. For ex Titan cannot have a crust thicker than ~170km, otherwise the entire ocean is frozen:

One fascinating result from our measurements is that the cenotectic is almost always at 22K below the 1 atm eutectic point and always around 210MPa where it intersects with the liquidus of ice III or ice II:

Thermodynamics is a fascinating field whose most important foundations were laid down in the XIX century. In fact, the earliest binary phase diagram I could find is from Bakhuis Roozeboom in 1900, and already shows the well-known components—such as the liquidus and the eutectic.

How big is Dragonfly? Bigger than most think! (At least me). Was able to hold one of the test blades, and visualize the full scale virtual model. It's close to the size of a mini-van / SUV. What an amazing mission!