Mars may appear to be dry and desolate, but the Red Planet can be surprisingly humid — perhaps humid enough to support life, some scientists say. The moisture in the atmosphere of Mars could be particularly conducive to life if the water condenses out to form short-term puddles in the early morning hours.

Almost all water on Mars today exists as ice, though it also exists in small quantities as vapor in the atmosphere. Some liquid water may occur transiently on the Martian surface today, but limited to traces of dissolved moisture from the atmosphere and thin films, which are challenging environments for known life.

The atmosphere of Mars is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s, and it is 95 percent carbon dioxide. Here’s a breakdown of its composition, according to a NASA fact sheet: Carbon dioxide: 95.32 percent. Nitrogen: 2.7 percent.

By comparison, Mars’ atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide. “There’s no free oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. You cannot breathe this gas. You would die of hypoxia within minutes.”

The researchers suggest that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material — silica aerogel — that would mimic Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect. In the summer, this solid-state greenhouse effect creates pockets of warming under the ice, seen here as black dots.

“Our results indicate that (meta)stable brines on the Martian surface and its shallow subsurface (a few centimeters deep) are not habitable because their water activities and temperatures fall outside the known tolerances for terrestrial life,” they wrote in the new study, which was published online Monday (May 11) in …

The lunar surface and interior, however, are virtually devoid of oxygen, so pristine metallic iron is prevalent on the Moon and highly oxidized iron has not been confirmed in samples returned from the Apollo missions.

On the moon, there’s no air to breathe, no breezes to make the flags planted there by the Apollo astronauts flutter. However, there is a very, very thin layer of gases on the lunar surface that can almost be called an atmosphere. Technically, it’s considered an exosphere.

Neil Armstrong

Eugene Shoemaker

3 people

Originally Answered: Has anyone ever been lost in space? No. People have died training for space, trying to get into space, and returning from space but nobody has really died in space. The one incident that technically happened in space was Soyuz 11, in which a vent valve opened and caused depressurization.

If you do die in space, your body will not decompose in the normal way, since there is no oxygen. If you were near a source of heat, your body would mummify; if you were not, it would freeze. If your body was sealed in a space suit, it would decompose, but only for as long as the oxygen lasted.

The primary problems with becoming and remaining pregnant in space are radiation and low-gravity environments. It’s important to understand both. Radiation can affect a man’s sperm count, rendering him infertile, possibly permanently. It can also harm a developing fetus.

The most immediate threat in the cosmic vacuum is oxygen deprivation. Assuming that you don’t hold your breath during decompression, it will take about 15 seconds for your O2 deprived blood to get to your brain. Simple loss of oxygen will likely kill you faster than anything else in the vacuum of space.

Flying through outer space has dramatic effects on the body, and people in space experience aging at a faster rate than people on Earth. These studies showed that space alters gene function, function of the cell’s powerhouse (mitochondria), and the chemical balance in cells.

No. The time-dilation effect of Einstein’s relativity has nothing to do with space. The faster you’re moving, the slower time goes for you. So if you were on some planet moving extremely fast through space, like in the movie Interstellar, then you could miss 7 years on Earth every hour.

We all measure our experience in space-time differently. That’s because space-time isn’t flat — it’s curved, and it can be warped by matter and energy. And for astronauts on the International Space Station, that means they get to age just a tiny bit slower than people on Earth. That’s because of time-dilation effects.

When he takes off his helmet, the following things will happen. His head would be exposed to the temperatures of space, which is -455 degrees Fahrenheit. The air in your lungs is FORCED out of your body due to the surroundings being a vacuum. You will have 15 seconds before the oxygen in your bloodstream runs dry.

“In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.” That was the tagline for the movie Alien, Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece. Released two years earlier, Star Wars allowed us to hear plenty of things in space, like the whine of TIE fighter engines and the explosion of the Death Star.

As for the question of who prosecutes space crimes, the short answer is that a spacefaring criminal would generally be subject to the law of the country of which they are a citizen, or the country aboard whose registered spacecraft the crime was committed, because the treaty grants that country authority “over any …