| Points: | 7 (₹ 7) |
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Rivers and oceans and their search beyond the realms of Earth
Is it that rivers and oceans exist only on our dear Earth? Not perhaps. Space scientists have found many instances of planets and exoplanets that have liquid water in them or perhaps had them in their past. Mars is our closest neighbour, which is widely believed to have had lakes, rivers and oceans in the past. Just like Earth, Mars had surface water once. However, it could not hold on to it for long because of its small size. It was some 3.5 billion years ago that our neighbour lost all its surface water along with much of its atmosphere. However, the red planet is believed to be having huge volumes of water in the form of ice underneath its rocky surface.Apart from Mars, in our solar system itself, the moons of Saturn and Jupiter - Enceladus and Europa respectively, are likely to be having rivers and oceans underneath their icy surfaces. Europa, which is a fraction of Earth's size, is perhaps having an ocean twice as massive as Earth's. The ocean depth could range from 60-150 km, compared to the Pacific Ocean's deepest point Mariana Trench at just 11 km. However, reaching Europa's ocean is almost impossible, as the thick ice cover is as hard as that of a diamond.
Even Titan, another of Saturn's moons is a likely candidate for having subsurface oceans. It already has methane lakes and seas on its surface. Triton, a moon of Neptune is another bright candidate for having rivers or oceans underneath its surface. In the years to come, with more powerful telescopes and spacecraft, we would definitely be able to know more about these oceans in deep space. Life, even in the most primitive form is likely to be found in these ocean worlds, if at all there is life apart from Earth.
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