火星の近地における水素の分布:地下の氷の堆積物の証拠

Hydrogen BondsHydrogen bonds are weak attractions between atoms that have formed other chemical bonds. One of these atoms is electronegative, like oxygen, and has a partial negative charge. The other is a hydrogen atom that has bonded with another electronegative atom and has a partial positive charge.Hydrogen Bonds Control the World!Because hydrogen has very weak electronegativity when it binds with a strongly electronegative atom, such as oxygen or nitrogen, electrons in the bond are...

Water exists in any one of the three classical states: solid (ice), liquid (water), and gas (steam or water vapor). The state of water depends on i) the intermolecular forces that draw molecules together and ii) the kinetic energy that leads to movements that pull them apart.
Water freezes when the intermolecular forces are greater than the kinetic energy. Unlike most other substances, water is less dense in its solid state than in its liquid state. This is because each water molecule can form...

The Earth’s hydrosphere includes all of the areas where the storage and movement of water occurs. Since water is the basis of all living processes, the cycling of water is extremely important to ecosystem dynamics.

Some solids can transition directly into the gaseous state, bypassing the liquid state, via a process known as sublimation. At room temperature and standard pressure, a piece of dry ice (solid CO2) sublimes, appearing to gradually disappear without ever forming any liquid. Snow and ice sublimate at temperatures below the melting point of water, a slow process that may be accelerated by winds and the reduced atmospheric pressures at high altitudes. When solid iodine is warmed, the solid sublimes...

A hydrogen bond is formed when a weakly positive hydrogen atom already bonded to one electronegative atom (for example, the oxygen in the water molecule) is attracted to another electronegative atom from another polar molecule, such as water (H2O), hydrogen fluoride (HF), or ammonia (NH3). The huge electronegativity difference between the H atom (2.1) and the atom to which it is bonded (4.0 for an F atom, 3.5 for an O atom, or 3.0 for an N atom), combined with the very small size of an H atom...

The deep ocean and its underlying sediments represent vast, largely unexplored microbial habitats that extend far beyond the sunlit photic zone. The photic (euphotic) zone typically spans the upper ~100–200 meters of pelagic waters in the open ocean, but its depth varies geographically and seasonally, where sufficient light supports photosynthetic life. Below this lies the deep sea, spanning roughly 1000–6000 meters (bathypelagic to abyssal zones), with deeper hadal trenches extending beyond...