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Imagine if all the water of the Earth's Oceans were added instantaneously to the Martian surface. What wouldhappen in 10 mins? In 10 years? In 1000 years? In 1 billion years?

Would life form?

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    $\begingroup$ Mandatory XKCD reference $\endgroup$ – Frostfyre Nov 10 '16 at 3:55
  • $\begingroup$ It isn't in the What If? book. $\endgroup$ – rubixphys12 Nov 10 '16 at 5:38
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    $\begingroup$ This one - what-if.xkcd.com/54 $\endgroup$ – Achilles Nov 10 '16 at 6:38
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    $\begingroup$ "What would happen ... in 1 billion years?" Um... Lots of stuff. For example, a few thousand stars would die, a bunch more asteroids would collide, and life may appear somewhere in the universe. Even if we restrict the scope to one planet, 1 billion years of development and change is far too much to cover in a single answer. $\endgroup$ – Frostfyre Nov 10 '16 at 13:41
  • $\begingroup$ Hi, rubixphys12. Several of your recent questions have been closed, for various reasons. In many cases, they were not necessarily about worldbuilding (see our help center for more details) or were insufficiently constrained. Please also see What types of questions should I avoid asking?, especially the information about subjectivity. Thanks! $\endgroup$ – HDE 226868♦ Nov 12 '16 at 18:55
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Water added to mars would freeze over and sublimate into the thin air. What this new equilibreium atmosphere does to the temperature would probably be greenhouse-like, but the ice surface would have a cooling effect as sublight is reflected.

Water and gasses in general are lost from Mars over geologic time scales. But that is a significant depth of water to get rid of, so I suppose it will stay like that for a billion years or so.

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