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Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: Water, not CO2 - Bad for terraformers?

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

RickSmith

Banned

From: Vancouver B.C.

Registered: 2007-02-17

Posts: 244

Re: Water, not CO2 - Bad for terraformers?

It has been calculated that the ratio of escape velocity to average particle velocity (V.esc/V.av) can be used to estimate how long a gas can be retained by a planet.

    Here's a table of figures to illustrate the relationship:-

  RATIO            TIME TAKEN FOR ALL THE GAS TO ESCAPE
    7                        Over 1 trillion years
    6                        Over 10 billion years
    5                        About 100 million years
    4                        Under 1 million years
    3                        Under 1 thousand years

Hi Shaun,
  Great series of posts in this thread. 

  I have a quick question, where does the table above come from?

  Warm regards, Rick