Why does water turn to gass in space? If it gets really cold shouldn't it turn to ice?

Question

Legite answers please.

Is it because of the no gravity?

Answer 1

Because although the temperature is very low, the pressure is essentially zero (<< 1Pa). Nothing to do with gravity.

Reducing pressure reduces the boiling point.
However below T=273K ,P=10^3 Pa, water goes cannot exist as liquid, it goes directly from ice to vapor.
This is what the phase diagram of water describes (see graph):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram

So the water will evaporate and then sublime to ice almost immediately as its temperature goes below 200K.
The ice is going to be in form of microscopic dust because the vapor molecules dispersed due to the zero pressure.

This diagram is actually clickable, so you can click on the phases and phase lines to see their curve-fit and coefficients.
In this case, go to bottom left (low P, low T) you can see the ice-vapor line from (P=0,T=200K) to (P=10^3Pa,T=273K)..
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html

Answer 2

Warm water (under many but not all circumstances). This is the Mpemba effect, which is somewhat counterintuitive, but was well known to Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes. It only works under some conditions. We still do not exactly understand how it works, and are not able to predict when it will be true. Conjectures include some effects due to evaporation, convection, conduction, dissolved gases, etc. At first it seems totally ridiculous, but if you think about it for a minute, it is clear that the system is far more complicated than what appears at first. For example, what might be relevant is that if water is going to freeze, it becomes less dense and rises to the surface, possibly forming an insulating layer. Ice is well known to be a good insulator. If the water is hot, currents in the water might reduce the thickness of this insulating layer so the heat loss is faster. I found a lot of interesting references about this and suggestions for experiments, and results of controlled experiments. However, no one really understands how and why and when it occurs.

Answer 3

The gravity plays no part :-(.

As the pressure decreases the atom loose energy and hence the molecules interact less with other molecules. This means that the bonds holding the water together become weaker and are easier to break. When the pressure becomes v v small, ie close to 0 the molecule has almost no intermolecular bonding so the molecules arn't held together. Therefore the molecules of water become a Gas.

Answer 4

No -- gravity has nothing to do with it but pressure does. The "boiling" point of water depends not only on temperature but pressure also. As the pressure is lowered, so is the boiling point of water. With essentially zero pressure of space, the water simply turns into a vapor and it doesn't need to go through a liquid phase. At the low pressures of space, ice can sublime; that means it goes from a solid (crystal) to a gas without having to go through a liquid phase. I've been at high altitudes (Denver for example) where I could see snow disappearing off the sidewalk with no sign of liquid as it disappeared.

Answer 5

Hi, the answer is that water does not turn into gas in space. Water turns into ice in space. Comets are made of Ice, (and other stuff).

If that ice got close to a heat source, say like the Sun, then it would turn into a liquid, then into a gas.

Answer 6

The boiling point of water, or any liquid, is related to the atmospheric pressure. The higher the pressure, the higher the boiling point - for example, at 2 atmos pressure, water boils at 120 deg C compared with 100 deg C at 1 atmos pressure. When the pressure reduces, so does the boiling point: the further you go away from the earth's surface, the lower the atmospheric pressure, so the lower the bp of water, which is why it is present as a gas.

Answer 7

It's because of no pressure PV=nRT, if P is near 0, it doesn't matter how low the Temperature gets (unless it is absolute zero).
Even if you had a solid chunk of ice in space, it would not change to liquid and then to ga., It would sublimate, that is, change directly from solid to gas

Answer 8

First of all, water does not turn into gass in space.
Second of all, there is estimated no water in space.
Thrid of all, water does not make out of Earth's atmosphere.

Who ever told you water/gass can make it out of Earth's atmosphere? They are lying.

Answer 9

well good q man 1st of all there is no gravity. Actually it is not cold but the hinderance frm the sun causes cold.

Answer 10

It should freeze first and then evaporate, just like it does here on earth.