So, where did the water on Mars come from?

The Toronto Star ^ | 3/7/04 | Terence Dickinson

[cynicom]

To have been awash with water, Mars had to have two things, the needed temperature range and sufficient atmosphere.

[ngc6656]

The puzzling part of this is that Earth's oceans, and now probably the water that was on Mars, both date from this period. Where did it come from?

The only reasonable answer is comets.

It is reasonable. Who first proposed comets as the source of Earth's water?

[Smokin' Joe]

I first read about it in "The Big Splash" By Dr. Louis Frank (in part).

[LibWhacker]

Don't know. That's a fairly recent idea, isn't it?

[ngc6656]

To have been awash with water, Mars had to have two things, the needed temperature range and sufficient atmosphere.

It is hard to imagine Mars had bodies of water approaching the size of Earth's oceans. Thinking regionally, one can imagine the formation of temporary streams, ponds, lakes, perhaps even small seas as comets of various sizes collided with Mars.

[Neanderthal]

Must have been a hell of a lot of comets to fill the oceans. Talk about bad weather . . .

[bikerman]

Martian lawn sprinklers.

[Simmy2.5]

Now the question is, does Mars have enough water now to sustain a self contained colony.

[LibWhacker]

Yep, I don't think there is much doubt that Mars was much a warmer place in the early Solar System, and probably had a much more substantial atmosphere as well.

[JoeSixPack1]

I was always suspect of those evil hydrogen clouds roaming the galaxy but questioned which star system was hording all the oxygen clouds???

[Joe Boucher]

in a word, GOD.

[Gazoo]

Maybe Dr. Grafenberg knows.

[LibWhacker]

It'd be so cool if we could go there, drill down and hit vast reserves of fresh water. It could conceivably allow us to go there and stay for good.

[ngc6656]

A Google search turns up that Dr. Louis Frank proposed in the 1990s that Earth's atmosphere is continuously receiving water vapor as many small comets evaporate there. Other sites that turned up in the search allude to the decades old theory put forth by planetary scientists that Earth's oceans were the product of the impact of large comets.

Study of Comet Hale-Bopp revealed that most of its water is of the heavy type containing the heavier hydrogen isotope named deuterium. If Hale-Bopp was a typical large comet, why then doesn't our oceans contain greater amounts of heavy water, they point out. Investigations continue.

[MosesKnows]

But where did the water come from?

There is no water. Rather than ask where it came from why not first ask, where did it go?

[MosesKnows]

The impact blasted the Earth's atmosphere into space

Was there an atmosphere to blast into space? I thought the impact is what caused earth to have a moon and an atmosphere.

[Crazieman]

Easy. The Bush administration destroyed the martian atmosphere and used all the water.

[aruanan]

The formation of the planets was an inefficient process and for millions of years the Earth and the other planets were bombarded by what astronomers call planetesimals — essentially leftover chunks from the birth of the solar system, up to a few hundred kilometres in diameter.

Don't you just love moronic sentences like this?

[governsleastgovernsbest]

I find the article very interesting because I had never previously considered the question of where Earth's water came from. Guess I assumed it somehow occured here naturally, just like other compounds. What a strange notion to imagine it came from comets.

But when you look at the vast oceans, is it really possible that all that water comes from melted comets? I really can't believe that. Are there other scientific theories, in particular ones that envision that water was somehow created on Earth?