Oceans Potentially More Common In Solar System

nairolF writes "The AIP Physics News Update has a brief note on how water oceans might be more common in the solar system than previously thought, rendering useless the old notion of a narrow "habitable zone" in solar systems, outside of which life cannot exist."

Comments

Dr. Stevenson previous paper

[codexus]

Here's an interesting paper on the same subject and by the same professor that spoke at the conference. You can find it in .pdf on his caltech homepage.

Oceans, oceans everywhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an interesting point: When people talk about whether water would be liquid or solid on mars, they're referring to pure, 100% distilled water, not brine or any water with salts in it. When there are dissolved substances, the freezing point is depressed, so water could be -10 C during the day and still liquid.

Also, on Earth, there is a plethora of water below the surface, although you would not want to drink it. It's usually saturated in salts like calcium or sodium chloride, carbonates, and sulfates. However, even 10 km below the surface of the Earth, in hot conditions and high pressures, 0bacteria thrive in these conditions (as they do in the Hydrocarbon deposits as well).

Given that Mars has plenty of surface evidence of (geologically) recent free flowing water, the scientific community would be remiss to assume that subsurface water does not exist. It likely has a lot of brine belows it's surface, perhaps rich in Iron salts.

Also, there are moons of Jupiter, like Europa (which is basically 10 km of ocean from what we can see on the surface) and Ganymede (with a lot of hydrocarbons) where conditions that bacteria and simple one celled life require exist. Given that we have already learned that bacteria in hostile environments on Earth (Antarctica, for example, in very dry and cold conditions) can hibernate for millions of years, it's conceivable that rocks knocked loose from Earth from the occasional large meteor (i.e. asteroid or comet) could transport bacteria to Mars and elsewhere. I think that if life did not evole there, it was transported from Earth by this process (or perhaps even the other way). Some people have speculated that bacterial or similar life found on Mars or elsewhere within this solar system is completely different from that found on Earth -- I would postulate that it is probably no more 'alien' that what we might find in the ocean near black smokers, that big underice lake in Antarctica (can't remember the name), or a barren, cold, high altitude mountain.



---this is not your kill9 sig

Argh

[kalyptein]

Ok, I'm going to be the crotchety scientist, you'll have to forgive me.

Ok, lets get some things straight. There's evidence that liquid water can exist in places outside our old 'habitable zone'. We know that organisms can thrive in boiling and subzeo (but still liquid) water, as well as surviving frozen inside ice (as happens annually in the ice shelves of antarctica).

So, this means that its *possible* for life as we know it to exist in these extraterrestrial oceans. No one is saying its there, just that its worth a look. Likewise, no one has proven that life can't exist without water. However, the only kind of life we *know* exists, does require water, and is carbon-based. I hope someday that we find that life exceeds this "narrow" category, but since we'd first just like to find any life at all, where do you think we're going to look? For the moment, time, energy, and resources are most likely to give results if we apply them according to our best information about life, however meager.

Rant over. Now get the hell off my lawn you kids!