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(Inverse)   This "Waterworld" could reveal more about what makes a planet habitable   (inverse.com) divider line
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    More: Cool, Planet, Star, Extrasolar planet, Hubble Space Telescope, TOI-1452 b, international team of researchers, Astronomy, subject of follow-up observations  
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817 clicks; posted to STEM » on 04 Sep 2022 at 7:25 AM (29 weeks ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



9 Comments     (+0 »)
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Garza and the Supermutants [TotalFark]
2022-09-04 8:21:08 AM  
Mom can we have waterworld?
Not today. You know we have waterworld at home.
But mom, ours has like continents.
Give it time.
 
Tyrone Slothrop [TotalFark]
2022-09-04 8:34:15 AM  
Not humans, that's for sure.
 
Unsung_Hero
2022-09-04 10:22:06 AM  
It seems to me that it's 'easy' to have a bunch of rock coalesce into a rocky planet.   There's a fairly wide range of values that will get you a rock while still giving you active geology and the ability to retain an atmosphere without it getting crushingly large.

It also seems to me that the process of adding JUST enough water that there is sufficient dry surface for non-aquatic life to evolve (and maybe life in general, if tide pools are indeed a critical component of early biogenesis) could have poor odds of happening.  Compared to the planet, there's not a lot of water on Earth - I think it's something like 0.5% by mass - but with just a 300% increase not even the tip of Everest would be exposed to air... and I strongly suspect that with something like double the surface water, we'd never have had an Everest in the first place and the remaining extra water would be unnecessary to create a 'Waterworld'.
 
LograyX
2022-09-04 12:39:37 PM  
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Unsung_Hero
2022-09-04 12:58:56 PM  

Garza and the Supermutants: Mom can we have waterworld?
Not today. You know we have waterworld at home.
But mom, ours has like continents.
Give it time.


Even if every bit of ice in the world melts and runs into the oceans, even if global warming causes expansion to raise the seas even further... it still won't come anywhere near submerging all the continents.

Coastal cities are proper farked, though.
 
CakeandBeer
2022-09-04 1:47:55 PM  
Surface gravity of this thing is a minimum of 1.7x Earth's. Might be able to land there, but nothing's getting off that rock without some serious work. It's basically Eve from Kerbal space program.
 
cryinoutloud [BareFark]
2022-09-04 2:52:09 PM  
We had a perfectly habitable planet for life.  Why don't you look around there to see what you're killing off, instead of building another farking rocket?

/sigh
 
Garza and the Supermutants [TotalFark]
2022-09-04 3:20:05 PM  

Unsung_Hero: Garza and the Supermutants: Mom can we have waterworld?
Not today. You know we have waterworld at home.
But mom, ours has like continents.
Give it time.

Even if every bit of ice in the world melts and runs into the oceans, even if global warming causes expansion to raise the seas even further... it still won't come anywhere near submerging all the continents.

Coastal cities are proper farked, though.


There is a hypothesis that a vast amount of water can be stored and retrieved from the mantle, and that we were a waterworld a few billion years back

https://earthsky.org/earth/ancient-earth-water-world-global-ocean-harvard/
 
Garza and the Supermutants [TotalFark]
2022-09-04 3:24:42 PM  

Garza and the Supermutants: Unsung_Hero: Garza and the Supermutants: Mom can we have waterworld?
Not today. You know we have waterworld at home.
But mom, ours has like continents.
Give it time.

Even if every bit of ice in the world melts and runs into the oceans, even if global warming causes expansion to raise the seas even further... it still won't come anywhere near submerging all the continents.

Coastal cities are proper farked, though.

There is a hypothesis that a vast amount of water can be stored and retrieved from the mantle, and that we were a waterworld a few billion years back

https://earthsky.org/earth/ancient-earth-water-world-global-ocean-harvard/


However, it's never going to happen in the future, unless some catastrophic collision heats up the mantle again, and in that case it's unlikely that there would be any witnesses.
 
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