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RichardKennaway comments on Stupid Questions December 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: Gondolinian 08 December 2014 03:39PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 10 December 2014 03:38:13PM *  3 points [-]

to reach boiling point

This is vacuum -- all liquid water will boil immediately, at zero Celsius. Besides I'm sure there will be some sublimation of ice directly to water vapor.

In fact, looking at water's phase diagram, in high vacuum liquid water just doesn't exist so I think ice will simply sublimate without the intermediate liquid stage.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 10 December 2014 04:01:28PM 0 points [-]

Right, I forgot the effect of pressure. So E will be different, perhaps very different. What will it be?

Comment author: Lumifer 10 December 2014 04:24:39PM 0 points [-]

Here is the proper math. This is expressed in terms of ice temperature, though, so we'll need to figure out how much the solar flux would heat the outer layer of ice first.