Should we continued to be amazed about finding water in our solar system??

Water water everywhere...

...Should we continued to be amazed about finding water in our solar system??

It seems to me that we are finding water almost everywhere we look -- there are signs of it in permanently dark areas of Mercury, in the clouds of Venus, on Mars, in the clouds of Jupiter, on Europa, on Ganymede, the rings of Saturn, on Titan, on Enceladus, the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, the millions of comets, and of course on Earth.

The pre-solar nebula and proto-planetary disk must have been rich in water, since the solar system today seems to have an abundancy of water.

In fact, I wonder how abundant water is in the rest of the galaxy -- and the universe for that matter. We are finding extra-solar planets, such as HD 189733 b, that possibly contain water.

So I ask again...why are we so amazed when we hear that water may exist somewhere other than Earth? I personally think water can be found just about everywhere (at least in our galactic neighborhood).

Well, water has a pretty specific temperature range to stay in a liquid form. So if we find liquid water, we know the ground temperature on that planet is somewhere between 32-212 Fahrenheit. As we know so far, that is a temperature that can very very possibly be able to support life, disregarding other things. When we find solid water, ice, it means the planet is too cold to support known life, but we explore anyways because climates change, and as early as a few tens of thousand years ago, water couldve been liquid, and there could be life supported by it. Finding water on places like Venus wouldnt be possible in a liquid form, its too hot there, but we would still explore because in the past, you just never know. (Not that im saying there is water on Venus, probably not... But i dont know to be honest.)

There is water elsewhere in our solar system?

Wow, I am amazed!

Personally, I thought the polar ice regions they've been showing on photos since my youth pretty much cinched the possiblity of water on Mars.

Amazing more people didn't come to the same conclusions back then.

reply to post by GENERAL EYES


Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the visible polar ice caps on Mars are not water-ice, but carbon dioxide ice (dry-ice).

That's not to say there isn't water or water ice there. Scientists think that liquid water may exist under Mars' carbon dioxide ice cap (kept as a liquid due to the pressure from the caps, rather than sublimating into the atmosphere). And, of course we now know that water ice exists in the soil immediately to the south of the Martian North Polar ice cap, as detected by the Phoenix lander.

[edit on 8/5/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

Technically speaking, water has not been found anywhere but on earth. Frozen water has already been pretty thoroughly confirmed throughout the Solar System. Comets, Jupiter's moons, Mars, the stuff is everywhere. Water vapor has even been found in interstellar space. But no liquid water.

We've known about water ice on mars since 2002. With Phoenix we've "touched" water on another planet for the first time but we had to melt the ice first. It's not like we wiggled our mechanical toes in a martian canal. Not to downplay it though, it's very cool. I'm sure the scientists who were directly involved were elated that their experiment worked, but amazed? Nah. They (and I) have been expecting and looking forward to this for quite a while.

I find the areologic evidence that there has been liquid water on Mars in the recent past compelling. I will not be amazed if liquid water is eventually discovered on Mars. I will be amazed if it is found anywhere else in the Solar System (other than here at home of course).

Ignore the naysayers. This was worth bringing up.

The ubiquity of water in the solar system (at least, in that part of it we have explored in some detail) indicates, as you say, that the solar accretion disc must have been rich in water. And it clearly wasn't the only one of its kind: the Spitzer telescope, as you probably know, recently detected water in the accretion disc around a faraway star.

I don't believe water is an essential precondition for the evolution of life, but we do know that it is essential to our - meaning terrestrial - kind of life. And finding it everywhere is just another indication of what I am now convinced is true:

The universe is lousy with life.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


i was thinking the same thing just days ago when i heard about more water on mars. we need more reasoning i think and not just some news to curb our attention away from the billions/trillions of dollars spent on exploration.

Originally posted by GENERAL EYES
Personally, I thought the polar ice regions they've been showing on photos since my youth pretty much cinched the possiblity of water on Mars.

Amazing more people didn't come to the same conclusions back then.

I'm with you. I've been interested in reading about science since I could read. EVERYTHING I read as a kid said there was water on Mars.

Kind of strange that they JUST discovered it.

Do you remember as a kid how much bigger the polar regions on Mars were?

This is what I'm pulling up on them from NASA's Planetary Data System right now. They've certainly shrunk a bit from the previous dimensions I've been exposed to.

pds.jpl.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by GENERAL EYES
This is what I'm pulling up on them from NASA's Planetary Data System right now. They've certainly shrunk a bit from the previous dimensions I've been exposed to.

pds.jpl.nasa.gov...

I've looked at some of those pictures. I wish the photoshop group would decide what color they want to make the sky look like, and stick with it. "It's yellow!" "No, it's red!", "Screw you guys! I want to make mine blue!"



I REALLY, REALLY wish I would run across an old science book from the mid 70s that shows pictures of Mars. I'd scan that sucker in, and show how the caps have shrunk.

BTW, does anyone else have trouble finding pictures of Mars from the 70s on the internet? I once looked for about 3 hours and never found anything.