News tagged with liquid water
Did ancient Mars have a runaway greenhouse?
Cosmic impacts that once bombed Mars might have sent temperatures skyrocketing upward on the Red Planet in ancient times, enough to set warming of the surface on a runaway course, researchers say.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
May 24, 2012 |
3 / 5 (4) |
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Chemists merge experimentation with theory in understanding of water molecule
(Phys.org) -- Water is the most abundant and one of the most frequently studied substances on Earth, yet its geometry at the molecular level – the simple two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and how ...
May 18, 2012 |
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Image: Saturn's brightly reflective moon Enceladus
(Phys.org) -- A brightly reflective Enceladus appears before Saturn's rings, while the planet's larger moon Titan looms in the distance.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
May 11, 2012 |
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Astronomers identify three extrasolar planets
(Phys.org) -- It's not little green men, but it could be a step in that direction: Cornell astronomers, using data from the NASA Kepler Mission, have identified three Earthlike planets orbiting their own suns, all of which ...
Apr 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (7) |
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Bringing Mars back to Earth
The search for life should be an essential component of a sample return mission from Mars, according to a recent report examining the science behind such a venture.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 20, 2012 |
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Defying conventional wisdom, water can float on oil
Defying thousands of years of conventional wisdom, scientists are reporting that it is possible for water to float on oil, a discovery they say has important potential applications in cleaning up oil spills ...
Apr 04, 2012 |
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'Tidal Venuses' may have been wrung out to dry
Earth-sized exoplanets within a distant star’s habitable zone could still be very much uninhabitable, depending on potential tidal stresses — either past or present — that could have "squeezed ...
Mar 29, 2012 |
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Toward a test strip for detecting TNT and other explosives in water
Scientists today described development of a new explosives detector that can sense small amounts of TNT and other common explosives in liquids instantly with a sensitivity that rivals bomb-sniffing dogs, the current gold ...
Chemistry / Analytical Chemistry
Mar 28, 2012 |
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Atmospheric origin of Martian interior layered deposits: Links to climate change and the global sulfur cycle
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) have proposed a new hypothesis to explain a class of enigmatic geologic features on Mars that have ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 28, 2012 |
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Fossil raindrop impressions imply greenhouse gases loaded early Earth's atmosphere
In ancient Earth history, the sun burned as much as 30 percent dimmer than it does now. Theoretically that should have encased the planet in ice, but there is geologic evidence for rivers and ocean sediments ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Mar 28, 2012 |
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Is it snowing microbes on Enceladus?
There's a tiny moon orbiting beyond Saturn's rings that's full of promise, and maybe -- just maybe -- microbes.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 28, 2012 |
4.8 / 5 (12) |
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Many billions of rocky planets in the habitable zones around red dwarfs in the Milky Way
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new result from ESO’s HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates ...
Mar 28, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (18) |
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Super-Earth unlikely able to transfer life to other planets
While scientists believe conditions suitable for life might exist on the so-called "super-Earth" in the Gliese 581 system, it's unlikely to be transferred to other planets within that solar system.
Mar 20, 2012 |
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Far-out photosynthesis
Photosynthesis maintains Earth's habitability for life as we know it, and shapes the way we search for habitable worlds around distant stars. Scientists have discovered a microbe that can use low-energy light ...
Mar 16, 2012 |
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Space image: Compact planetary system
(PhysOrg.com) -- This artist's concept depicts a planetary system so compact that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets. Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 15, 2012 |
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Water
Water is a ubiquitous chemical substance, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, that is essential for the survival of many known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. On Earth, it is found mostly in oceans and other large water bodies, with 1.6% of water below ground in aquifers and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of solid and liquid water particles suspended in air), and precipitation. Saltwater oceans hold 97% of surface water, glaciers and polar ice caps 2.4%, and other land surface water such as rivers, lakes and ponds 0.6%. A very small amount of the Earth's water is contained within biological bodies and manufactured products. Other water is trapped in ice caps, glaciers, aquifers, or in lakes, sometimes providing fresh water for life on land.
Water moves continually through a cycle of evaporation or transpiration (evapotranspiration), precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea. Winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land.
Clean, fresh drinking water is essential to human and other lifeforms. Access to safe drinking water has improved steadily and substantially over the last decades in almost every part of the world. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and GDP per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. Water plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a wide variety of chemical substances and facilitates industrial cooling and transportation. Approximately 70 percent of freshwater is consumed by agriculture.
For more information about Water, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
