Mars Had Surface Water for Eons

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Mars Had Surface Water for Eons

Posted by michael on Tuesday July 20, 2004 @05:51AM from the splish-splash-i-was-taking-a-bath dept.

LukePieStalker writes "Far from being a one-time event, it now appears that surface water flowed on Mars for eons. Nasa has announced that, after descending down further into the Endurance crater, the Opportunity rover has found a 'razorback'. It is believed that this was formed by 'fracture fill' from the minerals in percolating water. Since this feature extends through several geologic layers, it argues for a long period of wetness near the surface. This would seem to substantially increase the chance that life once existed on the red planet."

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Re:Water common? by LeahofRivendell · 2004-07-20 05:59 · Score: 5, Informative

Is water all that common?

Not only is water uncommon, the liquid phase is uncommon. Also, the reason it's so important is because it is less dense in the solid phase than the liquid phase, which allows it to freeze on top instead of on bottom, which in turn allows organisms to sustain life even when the body of water begins to freeze.

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Re:Water common? by AKAImBatman · 2004-07-20 05:59 · Score: 5, Informative

Water should be pretty common near stars as Hydrogen is the fuel which runs them. When combined with oxygen pulled near the star by gravitation, you find yourself with water. The difficulty is in finding it in liquid form. Planets and planetoids near a star will have their water blown or boiled away. This water will then travel toward the outer system. If no large body exists in the star's "temperate zone", then the water will continue on. If it hits a body outside of the "temperate zone", it will remain as ice.

At least, that's how I understand it.

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Re:Water common? by Rei · 2004-07-20 06:14 · Score: 5, Informative

"Not only is water uncommon, the liquid phase is uncommon"

That should have read:

"Water is not uncommon; only the liquid phase is."

Our solar system is jam packed full of ice. Heck, Uranus and Neptune are best described as "Ice Giants" instead of "Gas Giants", due to their expected ice cores. Ice dominates the moons in the saturnian system, the kupier belt and oort clouds are composed mostly of ice, etc, etc. In fact, it is even theorized that Earth got its water from comets.

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