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Re: Speculation on water loss
Posted By: Micahst <mikalucard477@yahoo.com>	Date: 9/25/03 8:56 p.m.
In Response To: Speculation on water loss (Grady) : Hi all, : I think I have another possible explanation why the water level on Halo seems : to have fallen. It may be because Halo can't hold hydrogen. : On planets, water is slowly lost by water vapor in the upper atmosphere being : dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen by ultraviolet light. Mostly the H2 : and O2 gas recombine into water (or go off and become part of some other : compound), but H2 has a very low molecular weight, so H2 molecules at a : given temperature are moving quite fast -- fast enough that some of them : on the far tail-end of the velocity distribution will have escape velocity : and, barring collisions with other molecules, will leave the planet : forever. Once that happens, the water molecule that hydrogen came from can : never re-form. (Oxygen and most other gases are heavy enough that they : can't do this trick on a Earth-sized world, and the hydrogen loss is also : very slow on Earth. IIRC Mars, on the other hand, lost a lot of water this : way...) : What does this mean for Halo? Depending on how it gets its gravity : (artificial gravity seems likely to me, but I don't know if there's any : conclusive evidence either way), it's probably much easier for gases to : escape Halo than any planet. I suspect that Halo can't hold any atmosphere : over geologic time, and it seems likely that, compared to a planet, it : would leak hydrogen like a sieve, leading to the fall in water levels that : others have noticed on levels such as 343 Guilty Spark. : --Grady That's an original theory. I like originality. :) I might be missing something obvious here-but if the water level dropped that drastically in a matter of a few days (the entire time MC spends on Halo is hardly a week, if that) then wouldn't it have been completely flooded a couple years before they arrived? Unless, of course, the atmosphere of Halo only "leaked" in certain places, like above the area around 343 GS (possibly because the flood alter the atmosphere by their mere presence in the complex below and cause the atmosphere to be unable to contain water as efficiently as they once did)... or if something happened after the MC and crew arrive on the ring which caused it to begin "leaking" much more rapidly than usual. If I missed something obvious, let me know. :P

Message Index

Speculation on water loss	Grady	9/25/03 1:29 a.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Infininja	9/25/03 3:58 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Grady	9/25/03 4:59 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Infininja	9/25/03 5:55 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	AlianAnt	9/25/03 6:05 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Infininja	9/25/03 6:12 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Grady	9/25/03 10:14 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Viscily II	9/29/03 6:54 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Micahst	9/25/03 8:56 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Micahst	9/25/03 9:02 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Plastic Chicken	9/25/03 10:43 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Plastic Chicken	9/25/03 10:46 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Infininja	9/25/03 10:54 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Plastic Chicken	9/27/03 10:01 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Grady	9/26/03 12:16 a.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Grady	9/26/03 2:09 a.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Infininja	9/26/03 7:19 a.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Grady	9/26/03 12:12 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Infininja	9/26/03 1:21 p.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Plastic Chicken	9/28/03 1:25 a.m.
I meant m/s/s *NM* *NM*	Plastic Chicken	9/28/03 2:06 a.m.
Re: Speculation on water loss	Dwain	9/29/03 7:37 a.m.
Re: Flood alter the atmosphere?	Wado SG	9/29/03 1:21 p.m.