Why is there so little water on Mars?

[Lancer]

The distance from the sun isn't much different... Less water asteroids hit Mars while the planets were forming, right? Why?

[Eli]

Both polar caps presumably consist of water(ice)... I wouldnt call it "so little".

[Odin]

Most of Mars' water is trapped as permafrost under the surface, there is probably as enough water to fill oceans.

[JohnT]

See, what Lancer is really asking is, "Should I read more Science Fiction, especially "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson?"

[chequita guevara]

@ JohnT!

[JohnT]

Am I able to get to the heart of the issue, or what?

Btw, Che, that's a hell of a book. Thanks!

[chequita guevara]

So you should have taken my word on Snow Crash.

[Thud]

Actually, water asteroids had nothing to do with it. Water formed via a chemical process on the Earth. For a few hundred million years here, water was not to be found.

Furthermore, there is evidentely a good deal of water on Mars. Its just frozen a hundred meters beneath the surface.

[Lancer]

"Red Mars" Commies capture Mars?!?



Thud, why is the water not on the surface like on Earth? If we warm Mars up, will the water deep down defrost and come to the surface?

[Lancer]

Eli, I meant by comparison...

[Panag]

Re: Why is there so little water on Mars?

Originally posted by Lancer
The distance from the sun isn't much different... Less water asteroids hit Mars while the planets were forming, right? Why?

hi ,

with no atmosphere , there is no protection , ....

both cold and hot weather evaporate water , ....

have a nice day

[JohnT]

The distance from the sun isn't much different... Less water asteroids hit Mars while the planets were forming, right? Why?

50,000,000 miles isn't that much different? Mars is cold.

Everybody's right... it's all frozen under and within the soil. Mars wasn't always this cold, but as it grew increasingly colder a lot of the exposed water just ablated into the atmosphere.

[Dinner]

I remember reading a paper about this a few years ago in one of my Geology classes. At the time of formation the Earth and Mars both had roughly the same percentages of elements (meaning Mars had lots of water just like the Earth does) but due to its small size and the resulting lesser gravitational pull Mars had on gases and water vapor much of its gases drifted off into space. The water that remains is almost all in solid form which is unable to drift off.

[Wtiberon]

Mars is a frozen desert. It's too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface and too cold to rain. The planet's atmosphere is also too thin to permit any significant amount of snowfall.

Even if some internal heat source warmed the planet up enough for ice to melt, it wouldn't yield liquid water. The Martian atmosphere is so thin that even if the temperature rose above freezing the ice would change directly to water vapor.

[Japher]

double post