Extraterrestrial liquid water not. Similar indirect evidence, however, supports the existence of liquids below the surface of several moons and dwarf planets elsewhere in the Solar System. Some are speculated to be large extraterrestrial "oceans". Liquid water is thought to be common in other planetary systems, despite the lack of conclusive evidence, and there is a growing list of extrasolar candidates for liquid water. As of December 2015, the confirmed liquid water in the Solar System outside Earth is 25-50 times the volume of Earth's water (1.3 billion cubic kilometers). Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount
Formation and evolution of the Solar System many planetary scientists think that the Solar System might have looked very different after its initial formation: several objects at least as massive as Mercury were present in the inner Solar System, the outer Solar System was much more compact than it is now, and the Kuiper belt was much closer to the Sun. At the end of the planetary formation epoch the inner Solar System was populated by 50–100 Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos. Further growth was possible only because these bodies collided and merged, which took less than 100 million years. These objects would have gravitationally interacted with