Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

[dalore]

Woah, think of the impact this has on homeopathy! With water having memory, that memory goes back to older than our sun.

[adwf]

Cue a hunt for the oldest water on the planet, market it as "Interstellar Miracle Cure!"

[unclebunkers]

This greatly increases my expectations of life on other planets if true.

[tjradcliffe]

Particularly 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-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.

[kirkbackus]

Careful. 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?

[cristianpascu]

Water is one of zillions of elements that need to get together for there to be life. Expectations increasing? Yes. Greatly? :)

[coldcode]

I'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.

[scott_s]

How you estimate it is the third paragraph of the submission: compare the ratios of hydrogen to deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron).

[autokad]

i 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.

[PierreDow]

Despite the media fanfare (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.

[baxterross]

the sun's hydrogen is older than the sun. boom.

[tomp]

Yes, 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.

[SergeyDruid]

Interesting 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?

[alphydan]

I 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 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis

[jk4930]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre

;)

[EddyTaylor]

It 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.

[kijin]

This 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.

[nilkn]

Water is indeed pervasive throughout the universe. Here's a pretty interesting and relevant article from NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe2011072...

[scott_s]

The 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]

I 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

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.

[Cleanaxe]

Light 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/

The New Testament also identifies Jesus as both Wisdom and Light, despite Wisdom being female in Proverbs.

[idlewords]

"And darkness was on the face of the deep". So in other words, the water was there before the light.

Story checks out.

[mkaziz]

Your quote says that water was already there. :)

[negamax]

Inclination of religious people to prove their texts to be relevant in light of scientific discoveries is interesting trend. And I see it everywhere, in all religions. Have you heard of term scientific religion?

[scott_s]

I downvoted you because religious discussions are classic internet flamewar topics. We'd like to avoid those.

[kp666]

water on earth came from meteors and some of these meteors could have been older than sun

[IgorPartola]

Here 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.

[CapitalistCartr]

Yes,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

[jarvist]

After 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.

[tedajax]

Um not quite. Fission is where you break apart a heavy element like Uranium.

Fusion occurs in stars and the more massive the star the heavier the elements it can fuse in its core become. However fusing iron into heavy elements is ultimately a net loss in terms of outward pressure so the heaviest element you get from the fusion in the core of stars is iron. Heavier elements can only be synthesized in super nova.

[idlewords]

Hydrogen + time = message boards

[digitalinfinity]

Reminds me of Carl Sagan's description of everything made out of star stuff- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw

[themodelplumber]

As 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]

At the time of writing there is only 1 parent comment poking fun at the bible. Let's not get too delicate here.

[ghayes]

Then feel free to respond to the comment at hand, not start another thread discussing the matter.

[ZoFreX]

On the upside, they got thoroughly smacked down, and I learned something interesting about Genesis today :)