Posts tagged water

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/04/water-worlds-surface/

“In our solar system, only one planet is blessed with an ocean: Earth. Our home world is a rare, blue jewel compared with the deserts of Mercury, Venus, and Mars. But what if our sun had not one but two habitable ocean worlds?

Astronomers have found such a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62.  This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone — the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth that liquid water could theoretically exist on their surfaces. Modeling by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) suggests that both planets are water worlds, their surfaces completely covered by a global ocean with no land in sight.”

Smithsonian News — “The water in Lake Vida has been cut off from its surroundings for roughly 2,800 years, nowhere near the 15 million for Lake Vostok or other Antarctic subglacial lakes. But, the fact that things are alive in Lake Vida at all further extends the idea that where there is water, there is life.”

Yes, it is true.

The Men’s Olympic Hockey Gold Medal game in Vancouver caused flight delays and large surges of water use.  The horrors!