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Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun
- unclebunkers 12y agoThis greatly increases my expectations of life on other planets if true.
- tjradcliffe 12y agoParticularly when paired with recent detection of water in the atmosphere of an extra-solar planet: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/water-small-warm-planet-atmosphere http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/water-small-w... Water, water, everywhere... There are people who don't understand what a big deal this is. They think that because this small blue dot happens to have a lot of water, and there is evidence of water elsewhere in the solar system, that water must be common. That is a huge unjustified leap, comparable to "everything I see falls toward the centre of the Earth so everything in the universe must be falling toward the centre of the Earth or moving around it in a perfect circle". That kind of leap rarely works out especially well. These sorts of observations that demonstrate that water actually is relatively common in the universe, and that is extremely exciting insofar as the prospects of life-as-we-know-it are concerned.
- autokad 12y agoits worth noting that all this article did was show that hydrogen (not water) was present in abundance? Unless I am taking that wrong. and if i am taking it right, a great big 'DUH' as hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.
- Bluestrike2 12y agoNeither article focuses solely on hydrogen. The Discover article is about interstellar ice, while the Guardian article above is about the observation of water vapor: > Scientists from the University of Maryland used Hubble’s wide field camera to analyse light from HAT-P-11b’s host star through the planet’s atmosphere. They found that light with a wavelength of 1.4 micrometres was absorbed, matching the absorption spectrum of water molecules.
- cristianpascu 12y agoWater is one of zillions of elements that need to get together for there to be life. Expectations increasing? Yes. Greatly? :)
- tim333 12y agoIt's a big one though. You also need a planet with a suitable temperature. Beyond that most of the other stuff seems pretty much everywhere.
- unclebunkers 12y agoIt's about 24. There are about 24 different elements found in the least element diverse life forms on earth if I recall.
- kirkbackus 12y agoCareful. Don't miss the precedent to the "every planet could have a drink". It all hinges on "if the solar system’s formation was typical", which is a question that has not been answered. Also, why don't they address the implications if the solar system's formation was not typical?
- viewer5 12y agoIs the common idea currently that our solar system's formation was atypical? Or do you just mean "we just need to be sure that's the case" out of due diligence?
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- IgorPartola 12y agoHere is a fun fact: only elements up to iron are produced as a result of fission. The rest, including elements essential to human life, elements in your body, are only produced through fusion. Fusion is known to only occur in stars. You are stars.
- digitalinfinity 12y agoReminds me of Carl Sagan's description of everything made out of star stuff- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw
- CapitalistCartr 12y agoYes,except it's the other way round. Fusion in normal stars makes elements up to iron. Only supernovae create the rest of the elements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis
- kijin 12y agoI think he meant "only elements down to iron" :p
- IgorPartola 12y agoHah, you are totally right. Don't know How I forgot/confused the two.
- timdiggerm 12y agoIt says that Lithium, Beryllium and Boron are made by cosmic rays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_spallation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_spallation This is crazy.
- jarvist 12y agoAfter the big bang and the expansion, and the condensation of energy into matter, the universe was almost entirely hydrogen and helium (i.e. extremely boring). The heavier elements were fused together in the solar furnances (stars). The early stars were enormous, burnt through their fuel (walking up the Periodic Table to Iron) and then collapsed under the gravity pressure when the fuel ran out and exploded in a Supernovae. During these explosions a smattering of the heavier (than Iron) elements are fused together. Our sun is a ~third generation star, made from the remains of other exploded stars. So it's more that we are all star stuff; everything heavier than Iron (all the Lead, Tin, Iodine, radioactive elements, rare Earths etc.) are exploding star stuff.
- kijin 12y agoThis is not surprising at all. What would the alternative be? The protoplantary disk that became the Solar System contained free hydrogen and free oxygen but no compound thereof? That's sounds unlikely. Water forms naturally given enough hydrogen and oxygen at a wide range of temperatures. Since hydrogen is everywhere, and since main-sequence stars produce tons of oxygen via fusion, there's probably a lot of water floating around in the universe. When a nebula collapses into a protoplanetary disk, the increased density makes it even more likely that gas molecules will meet one another and form compounds.
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- nilkn 12y agoWater is indeed pervasive throughout the universe. Here's a pretty interesting and relevant article from NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe2011072...
- scott_s 12y agoThe alternative would be that most of the water around now would have formed during or after the stellar collapse that resulted in our solar system.
- eapen 12y agoI came to say that this changes everything since I thought the light came first. Still seemed relevant. (not trolling) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_there_be_light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_there_be_light In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
- mkaziz 12y agoYour quote says that water was already there. :)
- idlewords 12y ago"And darkness was on the face of the deep". So in other words, the water was there before the light. Story checks out.
- Cleanaxe 12y agoLight was created on the first day, but the Sun was created on the fourth. And Genesis presents the Universe's primordial state as being just a watery mass, so water existed before both. Fun fact: Proverbs 8 identifies Wisdom as the first of God's works, hence the Judeo-Christian tradition of identifying Wisdom with light. http://www.esvbible.org/Proverbs+8/ http://www.esvbible.org/Proverbs+8/ The New Testament also identifies Jesus as both Wisdom and Light, despite Wisdom being female in Proverbs.
- sigzero 12y agoThe last one, you are trying to find contradiction where there is none.
- lotharbot 12y agoAmong serious Christian circles it would be phrased as "learning that first century Jewish culture was different from ours and didn't react the same to certain concepts". They didn't see it as at all weird to identify Jesus with wisdom -- not because they were idiots or missed a blatant contradiction, but simply because they didn't have the same specific hangups we do. Likewise, Jesus identifying as a "hen gathering her chicks" in Matthew 23 wasn't a gender faux-pas.
- themodelplumber 12y agoAs someone interested in science, I was really excited to read the headline and see the HN discussion. As a Christian I was surprised and kind of creeped out to see the "so much for the Bible" talk. I feel like a Japanese person must feel when an American tries to get them to laugh at jokes. But I guess in a way it's nice though that nobody ever brings up the sort of beyond-Religion-101 topics that actually challenge my faith. Edit: Why all the downvotes? I'm saying I'd prefer we let science be science, without the didactic religion talk, pro or con.
- jjsalamon 12y agoAt the time of writing there is only 1 parent comment poking fun at the bible. Let's not get too delicate here.
- themodelplumber 12y agoOnly one parent comment sure, but it was the second comment on the page at the time, and is currently the longest thread on the page. Nothing wrong with calling it out.
- jjsalamon 12y ago>Nothing wrong with calling it out. Says who, Jesus? The down votes are likely from sounding entitled and looking to be offended, especially if it was as you mentioned the second comment.
- lotharbot 12y agothat "longest thread" includes some moderately enlightening comments which are not at all anti-religion, but are challenging in a good way. . disclosure: I wrote some of them ;)
- ghayes 12y agoThen feel free to respond to the comment at hand, not start another thread discussing the matter.
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- kp666 12y agowater on earth came from meteors and some of these meteors could have been older than sun
- baxterross 12y agothe sun's hydrogen is older than the sun. boom.
- tomp 12y agoYes, the title of the article is kind of shitty, and obvious. All elements in the solar systems (except those being formed in the sun's core) are older than the sun, probably the result of the explosion of some much older stars. But what the article is really trying to say, is that it's "normal" that our solar system has (this much) water. > If our solar system’s formation was typical, cosmically speaking, then the findings imply that interstellar ices are in healthy supply for all up-and-coming planetary systems. And since all life we know of depends on water, that news improves the odds that other planetary systems have what it takes to support life.
- scott_s 12y agoIt's actually not obvious. All elements in the solar system are older than the sun. But water is not an element, it is a molecule: two hydrogens, one oxygen. So it's not a given that the water in our solar system became water before the stellar collapse that resulted in our sun. I could also conceive of the water and oxygen combining during that collapse.
- swombat 12y ago> All elements in the solar systems (except those being formed in the sun's core) are older than the sun, probably the result of the explosion of some much older stars. Don't forget those trace amounts of elements produced by our pathetic attempts at creating a fusion reactor on Earth! And all the material created by natural fission decay of fissile materials in the Earth's crust and elsewhere... The "probably" is unnecessary. Until the sun explodes and expels the core of "new material" that it's created by fusion inside of it, ALL the non-hydrogen material in the solar system can be said to have resulted from the explosion of some much older star. And given that our Sun is (thankfully) still in the hydrogen-burning phase of the main sequence, even if it did explode all we'd get for it is Helium.
- SergeyDruid 12y agoInteresting article. Now that I think of it, how comes that in all the (known) universe we have ice or ice blocks (such as comets)? Where from does it originates?
- jk4930 12y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre ;)
- SergeyDruid 12y agoFascinating theory regarding the ice, however, regarding the formation: "According to the idea, the solar system had its origin in a gigantic star into which a smaller, dead, waterlogged star fell. This impact caused a huge explosion which flung fragments of the smaller star out into interstellar space where the water condensed and froze into giant blocks of ice. A ring of such blocks formed, which we now call the Milky Way, as well as a number of solar systems among which was our own, but with many more planets than currently exist." maybe too far fetched? If it was like that we would have already spotted similar galactic formations outside of the Milky Way
- andrewflnr 12y agoWell obviously if we had, their discovery would have been suppressed by "reactionary astronomers". ;)
- andrewflnr 12y agoThat's hilarious. The Electric Universe of the early 1900s.
- alphydan 12y agoI don't know about the rest of the universe, but our comets are supposed to come from the Oort Cloud [1]. The rest of the water needs Hydrogen (The most abundant element in the Universe) and Oxygen (generated by nucleosynthesis in the first generations of stars [2]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis
- dalore 12y agoWoah, think of the impact this has on homeopathy! With water having memory, that memory goes back to older than our sun.
- adwf 12y agoCue a hunt for the oldest water on the planet, market it as "Interstellar Miracle Cure!"
- coldcode 12y agoI've always wondered what percentage of water molecules on the earth have always been water molecules, i.e. since they became H20 how many have been separated by chemical processes and later recombined back into water. How you estimate that is beyond me.
- autokad 12y agoi guess it depends if it came before or after the formation of our moon. If the mars-ish sized planet wacking into us theory is true, probably not much if it came before and just re-condensed after the collision.
- scott_s 12y agoHow you estimate it is the third paragraph of the submission: compare the ratios of hydrogen to deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron).
- AnimalMuppet 12y agoNo, that's how you estimate something completely different - the age of the hydrogen atoms that make up the water. I believe that the GP's point is something like this: It says "the water is older than the sun", but what it really means is "the hydrogen atoms in the water are older than the sun".
- scott_s 12y agoThe subsequent paragraphs explain how they go from "age of hydrogen atoms" to "age of the water." If you want more detail than is in the article (which is understandable), then you'll have to refer to the published paper.
- EddyTaylor 12y agoIt is hard to believe but it seems to be true. Also, it ignites another discussion; Are we alone or do we have some company in this universe.
- PierreDow 12y agoDespite the media fanfare (http://www.pressreader.com/bookmark/7WFY0PDVE4Z/TextView http://www.pressreader.com/bookmark/7WFY0PDVE4Z/TextView), I have some reservations giving credibility to a single model-generated study. Not to say it’s groundless, but I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet.