06-15-2014, 03:54 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-15-2014, 03:58 AM by Michael Douglas.)
There's a growing possibility that the earth holds more water than previously thought, deep, deep below the planet's crust. Also Mars. Mars might have the same large bodies of sub-surface water. Which is highly relevant.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26553115
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25...5yM9yjm92t
However, if this turns out to be true, this means that terraforming just got harder - a lot of hydrogen that went into the earth's water would have come from terrestrial sources rather than in commets.
EDIT: I haven't thought about this much, but if the Earth holds around 3 quarters of its water in subterranean oceans, might habitable ocean planets be rarer than we thought, and easily terraform-able dry super-earths more common?
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26553115
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25...5yM9yjm92t
However, if this turns out to be true, this means that terraforming just got harder - a lot of hydrogen that went into the earth's water would have come from terrestrial sources rather than in commets.
EDIT: I haven't thought about this much, but if the Earth holds around 3 quarters of its water in subterranean oceans, might habitable ocean planets be rarer than we thought, and easily terraform-able dry super-earths more common?