

Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence--In Space - mikeleeorg
http://www.fastcompany.com/1769468/scientist-discover-the-oldest-largest-body-of-water-in-existence-in-space

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crazygringo
_Researchers found a lake of water so large..._

 _...the water vapor is the finest mist..._

Calling it a lake is totally wrong then. I was really disappointed when I
discovered, reading further down, that this isn't a humongous blob of solid
water, a space-lake, after all... :( Not sure if even qualifies as a "body" of
water, more like an "atmosphere" of water vapor...

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Sharlin
Even more like a "vacuum with some water molecules here and there". Even the
densest of molecular gas clouds in space are still harder vacuums than
anything that can be achieved in an Earth lab.

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BSM216
No it's 12 BILLION light years away and its enough to supply trillions of
earth lille planets

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conanite

      The water is out in space, a place we used to think of as
      desolate and desert dry, but it's turning out to be pretty
      lush.
    

Why did "we" (who?) think this? Hydrogen is everywhere, oxygen is common, they
bind easily, there must be quite a lot of water out there. Although 28
galaxies' worth of water all in one place is still impressive.

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planetguy
_28 galaxies' worth of water all in one place is still impressive_

Sure, if you want to use bullshit mathematics to get that "28 galaxies" number
I guess you can make it sound impressive.

The amount of water in all the Earth's oceans is a miniscule proportion of the
amount of water in the solar system, though. The Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud,
the moons of the outer planets -- all these solid bodies are made up largely
of water ice (mixed with ammonia and methane, plus a bunch of rock). The
_real_ wet spots of the solar system, though, are the giant planets themselves
-- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Uranus and Neptune are ice giants, made
up _mostly_ of the water-ammonia-methane mixture that we lazy scientists just
call "ice". Let's estimate it at something like five Earth masses worth of
water in each planet. Jupiter and Saturn consist basically of huge seas of
hydrogen-helium which accreted around an initial ice-rock core; a much lower
share of their mass is water, but a good handwavey estimate would be something
on the order of five Earth masses' worth of water in each of those, too. [Left
out: a bunch of details and caveats.]

So we're talking roughly 20 times the mass of the Earth of water in the solar
system. (The Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt, all the icy moons, and the Earth's
oceans themselves are a rounding error.)

Now, let's recompute. Total amount of water in this particular object is 140
trillion times the amount of water in all the Earth's oceans, which comes down
to about 28 billion Earth masses' worth of water, or enough to form about five
billion Neptunes. Latest estimates suggest that Neptune-like planets are
extremely common, so there is almost certainly far more water in Neptunes just
in our own galaxy than in this big cloud.

Still, quite a lot of water.

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ChuckMcM
Do you know of any references on the behavior of molecular water in space?
Specifically whether or not there is a mass value which would be a modestly
stable liquid?

So nominally in a vacuum water sublimates into vapor, but at very low
temperatures it stays ice. So you've got these icy bodies in the Kuiper belt
which become comets when their orbits take them past the Sun. Typically, a
comet is 'solid' but solar insolation causes it to evaporate/sublimate giving
it the characteristic tail (correct me if I'm wrong here on this).

So what I'm wondering is, could you have a 'water' planet which was basically
a blob of water surrounded by presumably a CO2/NO2 atmosphere? Could it be
liquid all the way through or would its 'core' always be solid?

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Retric
It's not going to occur naturally, but you could have a liquid planet.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point>

Edit: The center of the earth is 350gph and 5430°C water would probably be a
liquid at that temperature and pressure but I don't think it's been tested.
Still, a smaller planet could be possible and stable on the scale of a few
million years. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_core>

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aoe
> But it was only 40 years ago, in 1969, that scientists first confirmed that
> water existed anywhere besides Earth.

Could anyone tell me more about this? Couldn't find anything relevant from a
quick Google search.

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planetguy
Try "water detected 1969" and the first result is
<http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1969Natur.221..626C>

Still bullshit, however. Comets have been known to contain water since the
first spectra were taken in the mid 19th century.

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sidcool
Why is this upvoted? The news is months old.

