oceans
What’s the Best Mix of Oceans to Land for a Habitable Planet?
Earth is about 29% land and 71% oceans. How significant is that mix for habitability? What does it tell us…
Satellites are Tracking Rivers of Garbage Flowing Across the Oceans
There's an ocean of human-made garbage floating through Earth's seas. From plastic straws to beverage bottles and food wrappers, the…
Water Worlds Could Have Plumes of Nutrients Carried up From Down Below
Earth's oceans are one huge, uniform electrolyte solution. They contain salt (sodium chloride) and other nutrients like magnesium, sulphate, and…
Europa Could be Pulling Oxygen Down Below the Ice to Feed Life
Jupiter's moon Europa is a prime candidate in the search for life. The frozen moon has a subsurface ocean, and…
Even Tiny Mimas Seems to Have an Internal Ocean of Liquid Water
Data from the Cassini mission keeps fuelling discoveries. The latest discovery is that Saturn's tiny moon Mimas may have an…
A Technique to Find Oceans on Other Worlds
A new study shows how next-generation observatories could directly observe oceans on exoplanets, which could narrow the search for extraterrestrial…
More Evidence that Europa’s Oceans Could be Habitable
At first glance, Jupiter's moon Europa doesn't seem much like Earth. It's a moon, not a planet, and it's covered…
Pluto and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Started Out With Water Oceans, and Have Been Slowly Freezing Solid for Billions of Years
It seems unlikely that an ocean could persist on a world that never gets closer than 30 astronomical units from…
Ocean Circulation Might Be the Key to Finding Habitable Exoplanets
We've found thousands and thousands of exoplanets now. And spacecraft like TESS will likely find thousands and thousands more of…
3 Billion Years Ago, the World Might Have Been a Waterworld, With No Continents At All
Evidence from an ancient section of the Earth's crust suggest that Earth was once a water-world, some three billion years…