Water in Space: What Happens?
How one of the most interesting molecules on Earth behaves in the zero-gravity, zero-pressure environment of outer space.
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.” -Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Earth is one of those extremely rare, special places in the Universe where water can exist, stably, as a liquid. Our blue marble is so familiar to us that we forget how rare liquid water is in the Universe.
So much of it exists here on Earth, that if you were to add up all the oceans on Earth together, it would weigh more than 10^18 tonnes, more massive than the biggest asteroid ever, and about as massive as Pluto’s giant moon, Charon. All told, that’s a lot of water, enough to fill a sphere 1,385 km in diameter!
