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Knowing very little about the nature of water, wondering how it might behave at the centre of a planet or centre of an another massive gravitational body.

Could water take such pressures or might it break into separate hydrogen and oxygen to find something more accommodating for the pressure exerted, if such atmosphere would allow the volume even?

Finally, bonus points: could triple points in water play a role in keeping temperatures low under high pressures via fluid thermodynamics?

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What happens to water under high pressures without the possibility of escape?

It depends on what you mean for high pressure and on the temperature, however, the water phase diagram can help you to understand what will happen. This is from Wikipedia User Cmglee: Edited image of User:Cmglee

You can see that at high-pressure water assumes a solid form (ice): you will have ice X at 100 GPa, and what is labelled as hexagonal ice XI in the diagram but is actually superionic water or ice XVIII at 1 TPa (temperature range 0 to 650 K). These sorts of ices have different lattice and internal energies.

What would happen to water as pressures increase towards infinity without the possibility of the water escaping confinement?

Unfortunately, chemists don't deal with infinity, basically, however, there will be a point where the water molecule won't longer exist all the bonds will break. After that probably you will have something called electron-degenerate matter have a look here, here is all about quantum mechanics, Pauli exclusion principle and black holes so on more Physic S.E. stuff. Edited image of User:Cmglee

Could triple points in water play a role in keeping temperatures low under high pressures via fluid thermodynamics?

You can also note that there are other triple points like (100 k, 62GPa) this however doesn't directly affect the properties of water but are the properties of water that determine where are the triple points. In a close system, kinetic energy is constant so I think that fluid thermodynamics doesn't matter in this case is more related to equilibria.

More info about water phase diagrams here.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for this GM.. any idea what would happen to water as pressures increase towards infinity without possibility of the water escaping confinement? $\endgroup$
    – irth
    Nov 26, 2014 at 1:34
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    $\begingroup$ @irth I've edited the question but I think you should try to ask it on physic S.E! $\endgroup$
    – G M
    Nov 30, 2014 at 19:21
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, @GM. Here's the question at PhysicsSE physics.stackexchange.com/questions/148914/… Seems like everyone is on the same page but it's still not clear at which point water's bonds will break and what the resulting reaction really looks like. Does h2o undergo fusion before the bonds break or does it undergo some exotic metamorphosis to pure neutrons, and what would the chain effect look like? $\endgroup$
    – irth
    Dec 2, 2014 at 2:08
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    $\begingroup$ Your diagram is outdated. Ice XI is now designated as a low-temperature, proton-ordered form of ordinary ice. Instead the high pressure phase, with unusual properties is now Ice XVIII. $\endgroup$
    – Oscar Lanzi
    Feb 10, 2020 at 1:38

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