> Interesting, I have often thought that there are too many things that
> seem "convenient".

For extreme "special pleading" I like the trail of accessible water
which increasingly appears to be available stretching out into the
solar system. It's like a computer game , or a TV junkyard challenge,
where a series of necessary or useful objects are left conveniently
lying around to be found. In the airless, waterless, inhospitable
reaches of the solar system it's as if, apparently, water has been
removed from the list in special cases.

Imagine, a few decades ago, how ludicrous the suggestion would have
been that there was free water essentially on the surface of the Moon.
Scratch that one off the list. When yuou can impact a spacecraft onto
the lunar surface and measure the water signature from earth I think
that that qualifies close enough.

Free water ON the surface of Mars. What a bizarre suggestion. And,
watch the video of
the water ice subliming away as you watch after being exposed by the
spacecrafty's trenching tool from under centimertres of loose gravel.

LOTS of water on the surface of Mars?
Apparently.
Look at the cliffside outwelling channels where the local water table
met a "valley". Then note the scale. Stand in the way of that lot and
yuou'd be very dead. Millions of litres. ...

But as you get out of the inner system it must get sparser. Right?
Io, perhaps, with water oceans under a relatively thin cap. And
perhaps not. But after a while it stops being surprising and just gets
astounding instead.

Not that I think that Occam and Murphy see a force majeur at work
here. But, they may be wrong :-).


            Russell
--=20
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