Celestia Forums

I found this picture on space.com about the Mars sized planet that hit Earth:


BTW: do you know what is particular about the Earth? its not the fact that it has water, but is the fact that Earth STILL has water after billions of years... something that didnt happen on mercury, venus and masr(if it had water in the past....)

BTW: do you know what is particular about the Earth? its not the fact that it has water, but is the fact that Earth STILL has water after billions of years... something that didnt happen on mercury, venus and masr(if it had water in the past....)

I think people get mixed up about this a lot... It's not that the earth is somehow "special" and that's why it has water- it just was lucky enough to form in the right place, at the right time, get hit by the right Mars-sized object- et voila- here we are! If the earth hadn't formed in this way, we wouldn't actually be here to talk about it! We might be "aliens" on some other planet in the Galaxy, discussing the exact same thing...

The only reason that the earth is special, in that it kept all its water- is that it actually kept all its water!! I'm not sure if i'm getting my point across very well...

Mars & Venus could never have sustained any form of advanced (ie more intelligent than slime) life for very long, because they just didn't form in the right place... Maybe if you actually swapped mars & venus in their orbits, the new "Mars" might have had a better chance, but we'll never really know...!!

Thats what i said: the "special" thing is that the Earth kept the water, not like the other planets.