5 ms·

Just a question, is there any reason why whenever we detect frozen water its on the north pole or south pole of any circular object in solar system? I guess one

• _bxg1 8y ago
  That's... pretty much the only reason you need. No heat == cold. If you were asking why the poles are always aligned such that they don't point at the sun, https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-planets-in-our-solar-system-have-poles-more-or-less-perpendicular-to-their-orbits https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-planets-in-our-solar-syste...
• glitchc 8y ago
  brundolf's response plus atmosphere, which can diffuse energy from near the equator to other parts of the planet via convection, although Venus ice caps are still colder than Earth's, so not sure anymore... The universe is a complex place.
  • jacobush 8y ago
    The ice caps hiding under an atmosphere of burning sulphuric acid at hundreds of degrees!?
• PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  You've pretty much nailed it. In the high latitudes, sunlight strikes the ground at a steep angle, so there's less of it per square inch. If that leads to the temperature staying below freezing year-round, you get permanent ice caps. (I think there's an extra twist on the Moon; the lack of atmosphere means that direct sunlight is blazingly hot even at the poles, but also that shadowed areas stay much much cooler since there's no moving air to distribute the heat evenly. Lunar ice doesn't form a continuous cap, but nestles in the bottoms of polar craters where the light never reaches.)
• Symmetry 8y ago
  That's true in the inner system but by the time you get to around Jupiter the Sun is dim enough that you can have ice on the surface of bodies without atmospheres.