Hunting for habitable exoplanets now may be easier: Cornell University astronomers report that hydrogen pouring
from volcanic sources on planets throughout the universe could improve the chances of locating life in the cosmos.
How does the presence on occassional
of volcanic sourced material from an unidentified eruption (local?
But as a planet begins to cool, rock weathering slows and the amount of carbon dioxide gradually builds from
its volcanic sources, which causes rising temperatures.
To nail down whether the ash could have supplied enough nutrients, Lee and his team used trace elements like zirconium and titanium to match ash layers to
their volcanic sources.
The layers had been transported several hundred miles east of
their volcanic source in California.
The geyser needs extreme heat (usually from
a volcanic source), water (stemming from an underground source through cracks in the earth) and a plumbing system (the water needs to be held somewhere while it is heated and there needs to be a fracture in the earth for the water to escape).
A recent paper in Science reported on a breakthrough experiment in Iceland in which CO2 (from
a volcanic source) dissolved in water was injected into basalts at depths of 400-1000 metres.
I suppose you'd have to get rid of all the geothermal and
volcanic sources to reach zero water vapor in the atmosphere, even with the rest of the planet under entirely below - freezing conditions.