Questions tagged [water]
Questions about the water molecule (composed of two atoms of hydrodgen and one atom of oxygen) and its detection in celestial objects.
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What would happen if an ice cube is left in space?
Recently I boarded a flight and noticed outside air temperature as -53°C at an altitude of 36860ft (11.23km). I don't know what causes such a freezing temperature in that altitude but was wondering ...
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Why do Jupiter’s moons have so much water?
Why do Jupiter’s moons have so much water by mass? Did all the bodies in the solar system start out with this much water and the planets closer to the Sun simply lost it to space?
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Could liquid water have existed in open space 15 million years after the Big Bang?
Around 15 million years after the Big Bang, the ambient temperatures was about $24^\circ {\rm C}$, which is in a range where water could be liquid. Could liquid blobs of water be existent then?
PS: I ...
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Is the water underneath Europa's ice cap potable?
I read this question on Worldbuilding.SE, and figured that the astronomy site would have answers too, particularly for the specific example of Europa. The idea is that Earth's oceans are salty because ...
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Where did Mars' water go?
Many sources indicate that there is ice water on Mars today, but it is mainly traces, here and there, but not that much.
However, solid hypothesis state that there were oceans on Mars, see Wikipedia'...
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How can we detect water on Mars-like exoplanets?
According to data from Curiosity, Mars' dust holds about 2% water by weight
This wasn't previously detected, so the impression we have had of Mars being incredibly dry may need to be altered. Okay it ...
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Why there are no terrestrial planets with a subsurface ocean?
Subsurface oceans in satellites are pretty common: Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, Callisto, maybe Pluto... This is due to tidal heating of their host planet, Jupiter and Saturn, which heats up the inner ...
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Could Venus be a source of Earth's apparent overabundance of water?
I've watched documentaries about the solar system, where it is suggested that Venus once had oceans of liquid water similar to those that cover most of Earth today. Venus is now in a period of ...
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Can Liquid Water exist on Mars?
Outside of a specially crafts environment, could liquid water exist on Mars? Not some time in the distant past, but within the last few years. Mars' atmosphere is too thin for water to exist, right?
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How did water get on Earth
I recently read that water more than likely got here by comets (carrying water) hitting the Earth. However it also it says the impact of a comet hitting the Earth is much greater than an atomic bomb. ...
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Salinity of Martian water 3.5 Billion years ago
Was Mars' ocean 3.5 billion years ago salt water or fresh water?
On a related note: would we be able to drink the water that is on Europa?
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Does the Moon Have Enough Water for Robert Zubrin's Mars settlement Plan To Work?
In Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" he outlines a plan to settle Mars by(among other things) finding water and using electrolysis to break up water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. This provides fuel for ...
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Would Europa be an ocean planet if it were in the habitable zone?
If a Europa-like body were in the Sun's habitable zone, let's say in an orbit between Earth and Mars, would the body become and remain a water ocean planet? In the habitable zone, the Sun would warm ...
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How would water-ammonia oceans behave?
Scientists strongly suspect that several moons in our solar system have frozen-over oceans of water-ammonia mixture. I've also read speculations on the possibility of surface water-ammonia oceans on ...
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How much oxygen did the Warwick/Cambridge study find in the rocky debris around white dwarf GD 61?
There are several articles out saying that a Warwick/Cambridge study of ultraviolet spectroscopy data from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope found a large amount of oxygen ...
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Water vapour in space
This question is inspired by, but different from, What happens if an ice cube is left in space?
Mark's accepted answer says "…if you stick your ice cube out in the Oort Cloud, it'll grow: the mean ...
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How would ocean tides work on a tidally-locked planet?
Since the tidal bulge is always in the same place, how would that affect ocean tides? Would they change throughout an elliptical orbit, due to changing distance from the star? How exactly would they ...
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Do NEA (Near Earth Asteroids) have minable water ice?
Water is very useful for rocket fuel and life support in space. But does water, in abundance and form which conceivably could be usefully mined this century, really exist in NEA's? Or do we have to go ...
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Could there be liquid water on Uranus? Are there any indications that there might be?
Like most planets, Uranus has a very cold outer atmosphere and a very hot core. What we see is a very thick primary atmosphere with plenty of hydrogen. Deeper in, we might suppose that water ...
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Meteorites bring water
The latest information suggests that Earth's water came from Meteorites . The Moon was also bombarded by Meteorites and yet it has no water. Is this because it lacks an atmosphere and its water was ...
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How do we know that comets definitely mase and not just fluoresce? What is it about 18-cm lines that indicates that is really masing per se?
Wikipedia's Astrophysical_maser#comets mentions some anecdotes of notable masers associated with comets, and Maser emissions from comets begins:
The 18-cm lines of the OH radical are the only well-...
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Where can I find datasets for all confirmed exoplanets, terrestrial exoplanets, and Super-Earth exoplanets?
The NASA Exoplanet Archive has a Planetary Systems dataset offers celestial mechanical data for 5,197 confirmed exoplanets. The Exoplanets Catalog classifies these exoplanets as terrestrial, super-...
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Can a comet orbit a planet?
Given that moons commonly orbit planets, why do we never encounter a comet orbiting a planet?
What would happen (exactly, in detail) if a large one did settle into a stable orbit around the Earth?
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How can "Geysers" on Europa reach heights of 100km?
After seeing today's Washington Post's article NASA just saw Europa’s geysers erupting into space. Again., and especially the phrase "geysers erupting into space" I checked and Europa has a surface ...
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Can a habitable planet be smaller than 0.58 Earth radii?
According to the below image, the lowest escape velocity a planet can have in order to still be able to retain water on its surface and have a temperature above freezing is 6.5 km/s minimum.
With ...
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If water vapor is always blown away into space, how is it able to create chemical compounds on Venus?
This is the follow-up of this chem.SE question.
According to Wikipedia, water vapor on Venus is present in trace amount (20 ppm). There are multiple reasons why Venus has very low water content:
The ...
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Is Venus in our sun's habitable zone?
I know that Venus is closer to the sun than Earth and if an article I read is to be believed, Venus is hotter than Mercury even though the latter is closer to the Sun. The explanation for this odd ...
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Why can't we detect water on Mars in the same way as in exoplanets?
Often I see news articles claiming astronomers found exoplanets with water. If we are capable of detecting water on such distant objects, why don't we employ similar methods to find water on Mars or ...
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Enceladus; why use the words "geysers", "jets", and "plumes" interchangeably?
Background, Europa:
In an earlier question How can “Geysers” on Europa reach heights of 100km? I brought up the use of the word "geyser" in association with the reported confirming observations of ...
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Why wouldn't massive torrents freeze on Mars?
I am currently reading the Cambridge Guide to the Solar System. In chapter 8, section 8.7, they explain that massive torrents of water created outflow channels on the surface of Mars in the past. The ...
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How was water formed?
We know that a planet is formed from the nebula of gas and dust. Gravity pulls the particles together in a core. So we all know that the gas cloud is a cloud of hydrogen.
But how did water form? ...
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Does liquid water on Mars means life?
We need to figure if liquid water is present throughout a Mars year, and how long the planet has been at its current distance from Sun. That will give us the length of time that liquid water has been ...
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How would water waves behave in partial gravity?
Would an "indoor" pool of water on the Moon or on Mars behave differently than on Earth? Would the waves caused by a splash be higher or lower? Would they propagate faster or slower? Would boyance be ...
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Could a heavy exoplanet squeeze water into being liquid and 4° warm?
Let's say there is an exoplanet orbiting its host star well outside its habitable zone. Suppose further that it has a lot of water, being perhaps comparable to earth when it comes to the volume ratio ...
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What constraints are there on solid material in the ice giants?
Recently there has been experimental verification of superionic water ice (suggested to be called ice XVIII, not sure if this nomenclature is official yet), which turns out to be a solid (or at ...
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Water Content of Space Bodies
In general, are carbonaceous chondrites (CC) or comets more water rich?
I know that evidence has suggested that both CC and comets are partly composed of water, but which body is generally more water ...
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How to calculate the thickness of the ice crust on a frozen ocean planet/moon?
How do I calculate the thickness of the upper ice layer on cold ocean worlds like Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, ...? I'm asking this for a programm I'm currently writing.
Given/Known is: mass, radius, ...
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How much more mass would Mars need to currently have enough pressure for liquid water and oxygen?
My question is whether Mars just about failed to meet the threshold or missed it by a lot. It's been dry for 3 billion years. How much bigger would it have needed to be to buy it that extra time? Let'...
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Would drinking melted ice water from Mars taste like sparkling water?
Does water on Mars form from the atmosphere as ice free from salt?
Does water desalinize through the evaporation and transpiration?
When the fresh top ice is placed in a container then pressurized to ...
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Water Ice on Meteorites
I was reading an article by David O'Brien et al. where it stated
"in meteorites only the water bound to the silicates can be found, all the water ice having been lost, whereas on asteroids water ...
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What would happen if we released water into deep space?
If we went to deep space by a spacecraft and released water into space, what would happen? Would the water freeze to ice or would it remain as a liquid?
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How old are the Martian blueberries?
The martian blueberries (only blue in false color) found by the Opportunity rover in Meridium Planis are formed by slow evaporation in mineral-rich liquid water. They obviously formed early in the ...
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Do/did the asteroids contain enough water to create Earth's oceans?
It seems from the recent Science paper by Altwegg et al (2014) that the commonly accepted source of Earth's water being the comets might not be (completely) true. Their study suggest that the water in ...
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How does water exist within the frost line of a star?
My supposition is that within the distance of the so called frost line around a star, water in empty space sublimates, evaporates. I further suppose that this means that vaporized water is pushed to ...
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Can a planet with a hydrogen atmosphere have a water ocean with dissolved oxygen? [closed]
Reading up on rogue planets (i. e. planets not orbiting a star), it turns out that a rogue Super-Earth with a sufficiently dense hydrogen atmosphere could retain its internal heat and have oceans/...
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How easy is it to mine water on Ceres?
It has been suggested by some futuristic or sci fi leaning thinkers, that Ceres' surface might be mined for water to support human exploration and settlement of space. But NASA's Dawn mission and ...
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Is there any "scale" for measuring salinity of extraterrestrial water?
Continuation of Is the water underneath Europa's ice cap potable?
The referenced question discussed if water from Europa's ice caps is potable or not and from the answers, it was gathered that ...
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Any information on the salt content of Mars' atmospheric dust?
Answers to and comments on How to drink water on Mars? suggest that one would not want to drink melted water ice obtained from exposed surface deposits near the poles because it may contain various ...
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What happens to Europa's (or another ice moon's) water if we drilled a hole through the ice crust down to the ocean?
Suppose we drilled a 1 ft (30 cm) diameter hole through Europa's ice crust. As Europa doesn't have an atmosphere, the water would obviously either sublime (turn to vapor) or instantly freeze once a ...
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How did Arecibo make radar images of ice on Mercury's poles?
update: I still haven't been able to get my hands on the Icarus paper linked below (I'll try other libraries) but these are newer and quite interesting!:
Constraining the thickness of polar ice ...
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