Water on Earth and Beyond Open Questions
During this workshop, participants agreed on a number of ‘open questions’ that future research needs to explore. Questions included:
How do we define a habitable zone?
What circumstances could cause the Earth’s water to be entirely trapped in rocks (something that might be true of other planets)?
What are the origins of water now found on Earth and in the solar system?
Scientists are keen to discover if water is buried on other planets as well as simply lying on the surface. Since the hydrogen content of water could be extracted for use in electric cells to power spacecraft, predicting and finding sources of water on other planets may be important in the future.
Ian Wright’s Fellowship coincided with the confirmation of abundant water on the moon. A planetary scientist at the Open University, Wright put colleagues in Durham University’s Department of Physics in touch with the European Space Agency and with NASA, in anticipation that lunar water will become a major area of research and, potentially, a resource for space exploration.
Water on Earth and Beyond Public Lectures
In addition to the research workshop looking at the presence of water on Earth and in space, IAS Fellows and Durham academics presented a series of public lectures, popularising these fascinating topics:
Richard Hobbs on the role of the oceans in climate change
Richard Arculus on water and volcanism Monica Grady on the history of water on Mars
Ian Wright on the Rossetta space mission to sample water on a comet Martin Ward on the existence of life on other planets
A full list of Open Questions from the Water on Earth and Beyond workshop can be found at:
www.durham.ac.uk/ias/events/thematic/earthandbeyondworkshop
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