"On Earth, the ocean is in contact with some rock. If we have too much water, it creates high-pressure ice underneath the ocean, which separates it from the planet's rocky interior," said Caroline Dorn, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich. This creates a barrier to mineral and chemical exchange, potentially rendering oceans lifeless. However, Dorn's research shows that even water-heavy exoplanets can support life if a significant amount of water is deeper in the core, preventing high-pressure ice formation at the oceans' bottoms.
"If you looked at the exoplanet community three to five years ago, everybody was thinking that [water] can only be present on the surface of planets," Dorn said. This viewpoint changed significantly following a 2020 study suggesting that Earth itself harbors most of its water in the core. This paradigm shift alters the understanding of where water might reside on exoplanets, impacting the search for potentially habitable worlds beyond our solar system.
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