Slashdot Mirror
How Water Forms in Interstellar Space at 10K
KentuckyFC writes "Water is the most abundant solid material in space. But although astronomers see it on planets, moons, in comets and in interstellar clouds, nobody has been able to show how it forms. In theory, it should form easily when oxygen and atomic hydrogen meet. The problem is that there is not enough of it floating around as gas in interstellar dust clouds. So instead, the thinking is that water must form when atomic hydrogen interacts with frozen solid oxygen on the surface of dust grains in these clouds. Now Japanese astronomers have demonstrated this process for the first time in the lab in conditions that simulate interstellar space. That's cool because all the water in the solar system, including almost every drop you drink on Earth today, must have formed in exactly this way more than 5 billion years ago in a pre-solar dustcloud (abstract)."
Why is everyone so hung up on this? Why does every article that has anything remotely to do with cosmology or biology have a huge thread about this bullshit? Get over it.
Yrs. truly,
Richard Dawkins
Note that the "K" you mention in the article is always capitalized, and, yes, it's standard nomenclature to use a postfixed "K" to represent Kelvins.
10K means 10 Kelvins, that is, 10 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. It's not degrees Kelvin. 10k would be 10000 of something that is either unitless or of units that are not given.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
10K, not 10k...
10K is not vague. It is 10 Kelvin
No, not at 10k, but at 10K, in other words 10 degrees .
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Where do all the Oxygen atoms come from ... I'm guessing fusion from within stars?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That's cool because all the water in the solar system, including almost every drop you drink on Earth today, must have formed in exactly this way more than 5 billion years ago in a pre-solar dustcloud
Why must it? Could you justify that statement?
Gravity alone tends to cause interstellar clouds to collapse into stellar accretion disks, and then into stars and planets.
Although the Hydrogen and Oxygen in the original cloud may have had almost zero chance of getting together, once the cloud collapsed into relatively dense planetary atmospheres, why couldn't water have formed then?
Nor any drop to drink
I think this is just an evil plot to get us all downmodded -1 redundant ;)
We all replied with the same thing within seconds of one another.
The parent of your post knew the answer, and knew we'd all correct him at the same time!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
in the immortal words of Keanu Reeves: "Whoaaa"
also forming in that dustcloud 5 billion years ago were minute traces of lysergic acid diethylamide. slight traces of which may also enable you to appreciate the far-out implications of you being a 5 billion year old dustcloud waterchild
duuude
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I knew my tap water tasted funny.
You're saying ALL the water in Earth's oceans came from hydrogen atoms interacting with solid oxygen on the surface of cosmic dust particles ??? I think it's more likely that molecular oxygen and hydrogen reacted at higher temperature on our planet (much like a rocket taking off into space).
You don't have to try it figure it out. God just creates it. No scientific explaination needed. Now wasn't that easy.
Why must it? Could you justify that statement?
The problem is that the Earth doesn't have sufficient gravity to hold free hydrogen. Free hydrogen on earth goes by by into space. So that almost automatically rules out any free hydrogen / oxygen hypothesis... or at least renders it less likely.
Now, so, maybe there is some sort of hydrogen compound and some sort of oxygen compound that could react on earth to form water. Well, then, you'd have to ask, where's the traces of those reactions occuring, and, are there any minerals out there today that support those conclusions. Right now, you can find oxygen in just about any good old mineral, but hydrogen, I think that's an entirely different mater. I'm not a geologist, but I'm pretty sure that the only hydrogens we find on earth are from organic compounds, and they get it from a reaction that ultimately originates with water as one of the reagents.
Now, that is of course based on a geological understanding that goes maybe at most a mile or two into the earth's crust. There could be some sort of something in the mantle where, ahah, there is a ton of hydrogen... you know, like water is formed from some hydrogen bearing rock mixing with some oxygen bearing rock inside the earth and shoots up out of a volcano. IF you could somehow find a set of candidate rocks and then make a good case for it, inside the earth, consistent with what we already know from the geological record about how the earth was formed, then yeah, you'd probably refute the underlying assumption of these japanese scientists and be some kind of a hero.
But you'd be a bigger hero than that... because, if you actually could find a non-organic source of hydrogen on the earth you'd be a huge hero, because you would have discovered a fairly green non-fossil fuel. Good luck with that!
This is my sig.
When will people realize that it is okay to be a young earth Creationist and still believe in science. The Darwinists have things mostly right, it's just that God created the Universe 6000 years ago and made it APPEAR to be much older. Time, as we observe it, is directly controlled by God and as such he can manipulate it to be anything He wills.
Water is the most important thing needed for life. The hard part of life isn't explaining how water forms, but how inantimate, dead chemicals can become alive. As far as we know so far, life has never arisen anywhere but here, although despite any lack of proof it's assumed that we are not alone.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"The book" doesn't actually specify either is the case, but based on this article I'll be taking the "dividing the waters above the sky" part down a notch on my personal allegory/literal spectrum, anyway.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The Earth's gravity is not nearly strong enough to keep molecular hydrogen trapped. You might get a few water molecules formed that way, but most of any free hydrogen escaped as is.
I think it would be more accurate though to state that MOST water was probably created via the mechanism described in the article. I'm pretty sure there was some fraction of water that was created through other mechanisms.
That is such a blatant rationalization, I don't know how you guys can't see past it.
Where were all the people claiming that "God Time" worked on a different scale before we discovered the true age of the Universe?
A better question is when will people realize that the Bible never specifies the date of creation. Only idiots take the story literally.
but the interstellar dustcloud waterchild concept wins hollywood glamor points, while your more reasonable point of view is mundane and humdrum
it is a facet of scientific theory formation known as michael bayification: the more dramatic and trippy the theory, the more likely it is to spread in the popular press, and therefore to gain more traction in the minds of the average joe
"5 billion interstellar dustcloud water" is just so cool sounding man. while your point of view is full of zzz
so c'mon, get with the program, your ideas are just so drab. perhaps if you redescribed your theory as it would appear being mumbled by a secret military organization figurehead in a big budget disaster movie. make believe you are a 23 year old hollywood script writer perusing wikipedia in forming your scientific mumbo jumbo
repeat after me: "hyperplanetary accretion disc catalysis"
or "gravity well coupled reverse electrolysis"
there you go, now we are playing in the big leagues of science-theory-by-public-relations-ad-copy-writer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.
Its not unlikely that life is common, but as far as we can tell is that intelligent life may be very rare or at least it tends to die out before or after some planet ending disaster like meteor impacts, super volcanoes, and cosmic rays.
If we view that natural selection is the ultimate process of determine which species will invariably live or go extinct then the only species that will survive over time is one that becomes intelligent enough or biologically capable enough to avoid, minimize, or just survive such disasters.
Hell for all we know the cockroaches descendants might outlive us due to the fact the might be able to survive meteor impacts and then go on to have a space faring species that travel on rocks colonizing planets over time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet.
If life is inevitable then that is actually very scary for the future of the human race. Think about it, everything we have seen of the cosmos seems to indicate we're alone. SETI has heard nothing, astronomers have yet to find a dyson sphere, and most worrying there is no evidence of Von Nueman probes (self replicating probes could colonize every solar system in the galazy in about 100 million years).
There is a Great Filter somewhere before a species reaches interstellar intelligence. If we are lucky, the Filter is behind us; life could be extreamly dificult to start, multicellular organizms on earth may have been a fluke, intelligence a freak occurance. The other option is that the Great Filter is still to be met; nanotechnological disaster, nuclear/biological war, environmental disaster.
I used to think that intelligence was inevitable in a galaxy the size of ours but if it were there would be evidence of them. The distances are incredibly huge but the time-spans are even more so. If humanity survives the next ten thousand years, I believe we will be well on our way to putting a probe in every solar system in the Galaxy. Send out a single probe, when it reaches its destination it builds ten copies of itself and sends them out. It isn't that hard, NASA drew up rough plans for it decades ago and I'm confident the plans will be viable within my lifetime.
If life is inevitable, why aren't there any visitors in our neighborhood? There are many theoretical answers to that question but the only compelling one to me is that we are alone.
Interestingly. 10 kelvin != 10 degrees.
The unit is 'kelvins' not 'degrees kelvin.' A degree means an increment between one extreme to another, which made sense for the Fahrenheit system (100 increments between the likely lowest and highest temperatures generally experienced in the environment the system was made in) and it made sense for the Centigrade system (100 increments between the freezing point and the boiling point of water at standard pressure.)
That's why degrees are also used in angles. 360 increments around a circle.
As the kelvin scale is absolute, referring to them as degrees isn't correct.
"Am I the only person?"
To RTFA?
It would appear so.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
and is one of the seven SI base units.
B-b-b-b-b-but I thought SI was always base-10, that clearly says 7.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
There is somewhere between 100,000 and 2,000,000 times as much water on earth as there is biomass(go ahead and find a better estimate on how much water there is, biomass is close enough to 2,000 billion tons, which is 6.7*10^14 kg).
Given a million years, not very much of that needs to be cycled each year for most of it to have been organic matter at some point, but it would be interesting to see just how much of the water in a plant is newly created(and the percentages of water that a plant destroys and creates in a given year would be cool too).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I always used to think that, except when I looked up the residence time of my local water supply ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle - deep ground water) I discovered that there is an 80% chance that I have not been drinking dino-piss after all...
Not every single drop of the water we use today is formed that way. There are lots of other ways water is formed.
... H2O !
:)
For example: Volcanic activity
Whenever there's some volcanic activity, you see steam coming up. Those are "NEW" water, as Hydrogen streaming out of the earth crust, it mixes with Oxygen in the air, and walla
I bet the Kilauea volcano in Hawai'i has given us quite a number of drops of H2O over the years.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Dredging my memory from a high school class about 30 years ago, photosynthesis utilizes water and recombines the molecules:
CO2 + H2O + sunshine => C6H12O6 + O2
Apologizes for the lack of subscripting; I tried and failed...
No, really. For hundreds of years the scientific notion was that the universe had always existed, and the idea of a "beginning" to the planet--let alone the cosmos--was just religious claptrap.
And if you want to get really specific, the concept that time is a fluid construct of your local frame of reference pre-dates serious scientific discussion as to the begining of the universe.
(Of course, if you're willing to prove me wrong, and can dig up a reference to "god-time" before the Big Bang theory, I'd love to hear it.)
...and it is a 'story'... then would you agree to call 'The Bible' a work of fiction?
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet. You sound like a seasoned explorer of space, who has spent countless years braving the depths of interstellar space, visited hundreds of remote star systems, only to be faced with disappointment time after time.
I really feel for you.
The kind of a claim you're making is even more of a hyperbole than claiming that there are no mexicans working in the kitchens of New York City restaurants, because you haven't seen one in Dubai.
I'm curious - why must he be an atheist if he rejects the idea of a God that would leave people in an apparent state of deception (from GP poster's point of view)?
He could just as easily believe in a different God, or multiple Gods, or etc. which to him/her is truthful in every way.
Or he could be agnostic, saying that there may very well be a God, or multiple gods, but that he doesn't believe that the God described in OP is the kind of God he would choose to believe in.
--
As for the 26 words... I know human beings more benevolent and loving like that. I, for one, don't need the love of a random stranger in order for me to help them in any which way I can if I concern myself with their person. Put differently, from the perspective of somebody who were not to believe in 'God', what would 'God' have done for them that would have him deserve their love? On the up side - those who don't believe in God typically don't believe in Hell and all that, and probably couldn't care less about what God thinks and demands, as it becomes a moot issue.
I thought it was a marathon. All water in the universe is space sweat?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I'm the guy who posted the thing about our water coming from the reaction between H2 and O2 *ON* our planet. You are saying that most of the hydrogen would have escaped. You have to remember that our atmosphere was not always the way it is now. If we had an atmosphere of just hydrogen or mostly hydrogen, for example, the hydrogen would not escape because it isn't contained within a heavier gas, therefore it wouldn't be buoyant. H2 has mass too, so gravity would trap it on Earth. Maybe there was a lot of hydrogen and only a little bit of oxygen in the air...and no nitrogen...who knows. All of our nitrogen could have come later; released by organic compounds that decomposed.
I don't know what happened back then but I'm simply stating that hydrogen CAN be trapped on Earth if the atmosphere isn't really heavy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Without looking into all your points, I am pretty damn sure that things don't happen as you describe.
You have three points here that don't go together:
- The only hydrogen compounds on earth are in organics and water
- Organics got their hydrogen compounds soely through reactions with water
- Free hydrogen escapes into space
If all of these were true, the total amount of water on earth would be constantly decreasing, and would have been for billions of years. This is not the case - the amount of water on earth is relatively constant. As far as I remember from my university chemistry and biology classes, organics don't, for the most part, break down water ever.
Now I don't know the **actual** hydrogen sink for life on earth, but I am pretty sure it isn't water as you describe.
One way to estimate this is to look at the carbon respiration of the planet. It takes 4 or 5 years for the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere to equal the amplitude of the seasonal variation and the seasonal variation is a rough indicator of the amount of cycling that biomass does. If we assume equal molar quantities of water and carbon dioxide get cycled and note that we put about 7Gt of carbon into the air each year then at least 20Gt of water gets turned into hydrocarbons and turned back into water each year. The mass of the hydrosphere is about 1.4 billion Gt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Physical_properties so the biosphere ought to cycle that in about 700 million years. Less than a majority of water molecules are in their original (pre-solar) configuration.
I'm so glad that's settled.
I was thinking the other day, how am I supposed to just go through life without knowing how water is formed in space?
Good thing we've still got 10^22 more stars to check out, eh?
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
You are an idiot. Please pass 7th grade science before posting on Slashdot.
Based upon the genealogy of the patriarchs as contained in Scripture, once one has determined the date of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, one should be able to arrive at a reasonably close determination for the Date of Creation. That dates creation around ~4106 BC. Also, christians are required by the gospel to accept the bible as the absolute word of god with no exceptions. If you do not fully believe in the virgin birth, jesus's ressurection, the flood, etc. then you are not christian by definition of the bible.
I prefer the Jefferson Bible, he removed all the BS from the bible. It cut the bible from 1660 (the one I found in my trash) to 46 pages of useful information.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
It does not specify the date, but it does establish a time interval (6 days = 144 hours). Unless God-days are different from our days. The trouble with re-interpreting the Bible is that once you do it in one spot, you open the door to do it all over. And then you end up with N sub-sects which all interpret the Bible in their own way to meet their own agendas.
What I see troubling with the philosophy of reinterpreting things is that people start reinterpreting the wrong ideas. First you redefine how long a day is, then you redefine how long people live, and the next thing you know, astrology is classified as science because you have redefined "logic" to meet your religious needs.
People need to realize that the Bible is a shitty science and history book and was written to an end.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
The bible never states the date of creation, true... but we all know it happened on a Thursday.
When all else fails, use fire.
Would you please stop modding Planesdragon down for defending his beliefs? That's just crass.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oh yes, we haven't found any other life anywhere else. Given that we can only really look closely at a couple dozen worlds (counting some moons) and we have only actually put probes on less than a handfull of them. There couldn't possibly be life anywhere else in our solar system, let alone the rest of our galaxy or the universe.
Clearly this makes life extremely rare and unlikely to be observed elsewhere.
what's that now?
Don't we all just hate it when off-topic trolls drag the discussion into the gutter. I'm glad someone knew how to use their mod-points wisely.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Since we are not classified as fully intelligent life by the Galactic Coalition, and are not classified as a safe food product by the GCFA, we are mostly ignored. However, there have been reports that many of the sub-species called "drunken rednecks" have been abducted and put through lab testing such as port probing, etc. despite the ban on such processes established under the Galactic Protocol on Treatment of Lower Life Forms for Scientific Study (sub-paragraph 81e on semi-intelligent life forms). In particular, the rougue groups who practice the port probing techniques have claimed that this does not fit the standard of "punishment" or "torture" outlined in sub-paragraph 81f, and therefore is permissible.
Just because life is inevitable doesn't mean it's happened elsewhere yet.
Cynical Idealist
Because despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, the creationists have reared their ugly, hatefilled heads again and are trying to tear society back into the dark ages where their brand of amusement was most popular. We have a moron for a president who actually believes "the jury's still out on evolution". Imagine! It's the 21st century and a world leader of an industrialized nation actually believes there's not enough evidence of evolution to make a valid case!
Enough is enough, it's time to take back reality from the delusional. Will posts on slashdot make a difference? No, but with all of the headway the delusional are making these days, it's nice to know there are still sane, rational people out there, too.
I, personally, will not get over it. Too much progress has been made despite christianity's best efforts to hold it back, I refuse to let them regain any ground.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
No Tuesday when the new DVD's come out.
200 billion stars, 6.5 billion years. The size and age of the Milky Way Galaxy. If life is inevitable, do you really think we would be the first?
10K of water ought to be enough for anybody.
Probably. It depends on how much of the hydrosphere is biologically active in a given period. If 95% of the biological activity involves 1% of the water, the cycle time is going to be much much higher.
Note that I am only pointing out that there is a big if, not trying to speculate on what the numbers really are.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Yawn.
There is however the literal lineage of Jesus in the gospels to deal with.
Luke 3 traces the father/son lineage from Jesus back to Adam.
Assuming a ~6000 year old Earth (4000 years before Jesus) - you end up with an average of about 50 years between generations.
If man's lineage extends back ~200,000 years (homo sapiens) - you end up with about 2,500 years between generations, on average.
If you assume man's lineage extends back to ~2 million years (homo habilis) - you end up with an average of about 25,000 years between generations.
You get some pretty outrageous numbers for generation gap using anywhere near currently accepted values for the origins of man.
If you are going to discount Genesis as allegory, are you going to make the same claim about Matthew and Luke - both of which contain (slightly differing) lineage reports?
"Water is the most abundant solid material in space. " Hmm, solid water. If only we had some term to describe this stuff.
Unless God-days are different from our days.
I would argue that it can't be a literal day, because the literal day was shorter 6,000 years ago than it is today, if only by 80 milliseconds. The Earth's rotation slows down very slightly every year due to tidal friction.
Furthermore, the 24 hour period is not exactly 24 hours. Depending on where you measure it, and depending on whether you are measuring high noon, or whatever, the actual amount of time only averages to approximately 24 hours, it is not the same exact figure every day.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It does not specify the date, but it does establish a time interval (6 days = 144 hours). Unless God-days are different from our days.
END QUOTE
The Christian Bible actually does expand upon this a bit... Although, you might say it is also open to interpretation...
"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past..." - Psalms 90:4
In other words, according to the Bible, 1000 Human Years is equal to 1 God Days. Therefore, using this assumption and rounding the numbers up a little for the sake of convenience, Jesus Christ (who is said to be "The Son of God") has only been gone for approximately 2 God Days (2000 Human Years).
With regards to Genesis and the account of creation... When the Bible says it took God six days to build and construct Earth, the Bible doesn't state which unit of measure we're using here. Are we talking 6 God Days (6000 Human Years) or are we actually talking 6 Human Days?
Now, back to our previously scheduled debate.
I, personally, will not get over it. Too much progress has been made despite christianity's best efforts to hold it back, I refuse to let them regain any ground.
I agree. Were it not for christianity, we could have stronger, Roman values, and could merely justify the extermination of our enemies because they were weaker.
Look, you have all of these people arguing against the USA military actions around the world, as if, there was some sort of a cosmic judge that holds us wrong. This planet lives at the mercy of the USA and it is high time we make it pay for us.
The sooner we get rid of religion, and focus on survival of the fittest, we can eliminate the silly notions of the soul and with it the idea of fundamental rights. From there, we can proceed with the extermination of the third world, replacing weaker cultures with a stronger industrialized one, keeping the planet for those who have the values to use it, not merely subsistent parasites that besmirch the very name of humanity with their almost termite like existence.
This is my sig.
Actually god made the universe 6 minuets ago and he just created all our memories to make it seem longer. He also stops and starts the universe routinely but we don't notice because we can't see time.
Does a postfixed "K" represent something different within the scientific community that I simply didn't know about?
Google is your friend.
Uh, yeah, like cause 10K is -441.4 degrees Fahrenheit or -263 degrees Celsius.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Regardless of the precision of your measurement, what is a day? A book written for human consumption should assume that the units are familiar to them. Otherwise you run the risk of looking like you are trying to rewrite the Bible in order to reconcile the biblical account with the scientific one.
I have given up on trying to reconcile the biblical account of creation with what we currently observe and understand today. You have to get way too creative in your interpretation in order to make it happen, and in doing so, you create a bad precedent for the rest of the book.
A much simpler solution (for me) is to infer that the bible was a document created by Stone-Age men who had no clue how the world came about. They made something up based on someone's vision, dream, or hallucination and used that to establish the social order. Every document in the Bible was written in this fashion and included into the Bible by a committee of men, who decided somehow that it was inspired by a deity. To me, there is way too much confusion and disorder in that book for it to be written by the supreme creator.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
...that is, 10 degrees Celsius above absolute zero.
That's almost as bad. What you meant to say was, "-263.15 degrees Celsius."
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
C6H1206 + H2O + yeast => CO2 + moonshine
You're absolutely right. However, so much of Christianity is built on the literal truth of the Bible, such that if you *can't* take it literally, then *everything* in the bible becomse suspect. People will grasp on to the literal word of the Bible because that's the only way some people can find stability in their faith, by deluding themselves.
If the earth wasn't built in six days, then maybe, just maybe, water wasn't turned into wine, and maybe the promise of everlasting life may not really be a promise after all.
So let's say the earth was made 6000 years ago. Now you have stars that are thousands of light years away that are just now shining their light down on us? If you have a star 20,000 light years away, how do you reconcile that? Holy Shit, God can even create light *in transit* just to shine down on the fake dinosaur bones he buried in the ground 6000 years ago.
Or maybe it's just a bunch of bull.
Good thought. I'd guess that since the time for ocean circulation to bring the oceans vertical temperature distribution back into equilibrium after a instantaneous change in CO2 is a couple of centruries, most hydrogen is available to be evaporated or used by seaweed and plankton on that kind of timescale. A portion could be held as inactive archaic aquifers, but not the majority. Evidence of past inland seas suggests that icesheets do no persist on geological timescale and thus do not hold water all that long.
Isn't this the 3 or 4th time in the past year this story has been on the front page?
you know this is /. when a discussion about "How water Forms in Interstellar Space at 10K" turns into a discussion about God, religion, the cosmos etc.
this is why i like this place:)
I'd always assumed that it was formed from ions:
- Oxygen atom collects a lose electron or two to form a negatively-charged oxygen ion.
- Oxygen ion collects a lose proton or hydrogen atom to form a hydroxyl ion (or "atom")
- Hydroxyl ion collects a lose proton, or
- Hydroxyl "atom" collects first an electron then a proton.
No surface necessary: The captures can start out very tenuous (say, due to interactions with additional particles or magnetic fields in a gas cloud) and then conserve momentum by radiating photons and recoiling as the captured particles descend through the energy levels toward a neutral molecule.
But I'm not an astrophysicist, so I have no idea how plausible that water-origin story is.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It does. "The beginning," "the second day," "the third day," "the beginning," etc. It's a rather simplistic calendar, but it is indeed rather specific as well.
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.
then, uh, where is it? That's the Fermi problem. If life would have erupted under all sorts of conditions in the universe, somebody smart should have evolved besides us by now. After all, the earth is only a 1/3 the age of the universe and theoretically there could be and should be civilizations out there that are literally thousands, millions and billions of years older than our own.
But we have seen -nothing-.
This is my sig.
The universe could be teeming with life and we wouldn't know it - we have such a limited idea of what to look for, and such a limited ability to look.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When will people realize that it is okay to be a young earth Creationist and still believe in science. The Darwinists have things mostly right, it's just that God created the Universe 6000 years ago and made it APPEAR to be much older. Time, as we observe it, is directly controlled by God and as such he can manipulate it to be anything He wills.
We actually did not exist two seconds ago. Everything you believe in, even the continuity of your life, is a morality play created by God every two seconds. The entire universe, every living thing, is just the luminous beings of heaven arranging thesmelves across the multiverse in a number of beings... the real you, the you that exists for two seconds, might well spend its next as a frog or a bacteria.
This is my sig.
So it would be 10kK, O.K.?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In other words, according to the Bible, 1000 Human Years is equal to 1 God Day
That's ridiculous. You are talking about a rhetorical point in Psalms that has absolutely nothing to do with setting up a scale of time in Genesis.
The book of Genesis is a good story with a moral point. The idea wasn't to say how the earth was made, it was to paint a backstory which illustrates that sin and temptation are as old as the earth itself, which is undeniably true.
Do you really think God would go to someone who barely had invented fire, and try and explain the ins and outs of big bang theory? I mean, what would be the point of the human experience if we couldn't discover it for ourselves, and learn for ourselves?
So God -lied-. Get over it. He is God and he can do what He wants.
This is my sig.
You're absolutely right. However, so much of Christianity is built on the literal truth of the Bible, such that if you *can't* take it literally, then *everything* in the bible becomse suspect
Biblical inerracy is not the basis of religion. Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is an oral tradition religion that uses the bible as a common frame of spiritual reference..
The whole deal with the church wasn't so much as to say the bible was the sole truth, as it was to say that the church had the sole role in interpreting the bible. Nobody really had a problem with Galileo, in fact, he enjoyed the support of the Pope, until he started basically casting judgements about the bible itself, and that was a usurpation of the power of the church.
This is my sig.
Ah yes, Kelvin. The standard unit of desktop temperature, as defined by KDE.
Similarly, I highly doubt my car keys exist because I've patted down my coat and both pockets have tested negative.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
We have quite a few assumptions in these sentences. It almost sounds like the humans are telling Nature what *must* have happened because the humans really are out of ideas. In order to uphold our elitist attitude that we can explain everything (even it requires a chain of assumptions and no real proof) we are saying what must have happened because if we can't think of any other explanation then the explanation we have must be correct. This will be a story when they have more than basic assumptions and demands upon Nature that imply we know what happened 5 billion years ago even though we weren't there. The fact they created water using a particular method in no way implies or dictates that some (let alone all) the water outside the lab formed the exact same way.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
English style usually requires a space between a number and a unit, so that 10 Kelvin would be written 10 K.
But Slashdot editors really don't care. TenK, 10Kelvin, and 10K all mean pretty much the same thing.
A million civilizations could have risen and turned to dust, bombarding the galaxy with radio and television signals and it is very likely we would have missed the tiny flash they made.
In times of trouble, the smell of frying onions usually gives confidence and comfort.
The above taken from this essay by Nick Bostrom: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20569/?a=f
Just how fucking retarded are people that they must apply the words "lose" and "loose" incorrectly every fucking time?
I lose my temper when I see it.
I let loose with a chainsaw when I see it.
Idiots.
Nobody in this thread knows about the self-ionization of water? A given water molecule dissociates and recombines with a different hydrogen about every 10 hours, merely due to the fact that it's bumping into other water molecules.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ionization_of_water#Concentration_and_frequency
So, going off of these tongue-in-cheek "waterchild" theories in the comments above -- perhaps Thales wasn't so crazy after all positing the origins of the universe as water-based?
I knew I'd get to throw out my (admittedly limited) Presocratic knowledge at some point!
You need to keep in mind the context. Check the post three up that started this:
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.The poster you are criticizing has merely pointed out that based on the little we currently know, this thesis is unsupported.
Well, he could be Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged? He could just be visiting all those planets to insult every living being in the universe - in alphabetical order.
Or from the wikipedia article on the Fermi Paradox. There's nothing wrong with repeating and expanding on other people's ideas in your own words.
If you actually study the creation myths, that means that god specifically created the water. In all of the early universe models, there is water both underneath the earth and above the sky. This blatantly obvious, since sometimes the water leaks out of the sky, and if you dig down into the earth, you find the water below. We of course, now know that the water is just droplets condensing to form clouds, and then accumulating to form rain, and that there's a water table, with solid rock below that. However, for their time, it was a very nuanced understanding.
Exactly. I mean the first paragraph about countries owing it to the USA raised an eyebrow, but when he got to the stuff about the third world, the right to use the earth and termites i took a quick look to see if anyone else modded it funny. Sadly, no.But then again when it comes to religion everyone prefers to take it seriously, god (pun intended) forbid to make fun of someone religious beliefs...
Curiously yours, crip.
Er, 'organics' somehow have the ability to 'crack' or 'fractionate' H2O? sans electrolysis?
Me thinks not.
Whatever these idiots are smoking, I DO NOT WANT IT!
NEW WATER is formed whenever hydorgen burns, requiring oxygen to burn. Chemistry 101.
I'll take that wager. With something on the order of one atom of hydrogen per cubic centimeter of interstellar space (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml), or even two to four atoms per cubic meter of space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space), I think interstellar atomic hydrogen just in the Milky Way will be multiple orders of magnitude greater than all hydrogen on earth, including the hydrogen bound in molecules of water, etc. If you care to quantify the number of said molecules on earth, I'll compute the amount of space needed to equal that.
Wow, If I ever heard bull**** on Slashdot, this would be it.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
Why do you blindly assume that intelligence is a characteristic that increases the survival chances of a species?
I don't see any proof of that.
As a matter of fact, I can see lots of evidence to support the theory that too much intelligence reduces the survival chances for a species.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
On the other hand, the reasons for separate Hispanic, Chinese, and Korean Protestant churches in the US are primarily language. Catholic churches didn't traditionally have this problem as much, because if everything's in Latin then only the people who've learned their Latin really understand the show (though the Italians and Spanish can catch some of it anyway.) But for the rest of us, and for Catholic churches after Vatican II, it's really nice to understand what the preacher is saying, especially on complex philosophical or emotional issues, and to be able to talk to each other the rest of the time, and the alternatives are to either hang out in separate groups or to share the world's most common language, which is Bad English.
Haitians in the Northeast US are an edge case - they've usually had separate churches because they're speaking Creole French, but of course the reasons they're black are because of slavery.
I used to go to a Southern Baptist church in New Jersey, and it was really annoying to hear some people refer to it as a "white" church - we were about 1/3 Chinese, a few black families, a few Colombians, a few Puerto Ricans, an Arab family, some southerners, some Yankees, some Vietnamese (well, technically they were Chinese from Saigon, but they spoke Hakka). Not bad for under 100 people. Eventually a Chinese-language church opened up nearby and most of the Chinese families started going to it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Space is really big and empty, and vaguely potentially habitable places to live are really rare and far apart - and starships that you can build in your backyard, or possibly even in your planet's backyard, are from the fiction side of science fiction, not the science side.
Even if there _are_ other intelligent beings out there, it's pretty unlikely that they'd be able to afford to burn the kind of resources it would take to do much starfaring. Even communications is really hard - if a species spends a million years broadcasting into space using frequencies and patterns we'd recognize as communications, that doesn't get you much coverage, and maybe they last probed our direction a century ago so we've missed our chance for the millenium, or maybe we just didn't recognize the signal they sent us last Tuesday because SETI wasn't pointed in the right direction.
Or, well, they figured that we're made out of meat, and didn't want to keep talking to us.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... oh, never mind, everybody pretty much figured that one was coming anyway.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe you're just trying to be funny. Or maybe you really didn't understand the post.
The parent was responding to someone who made the completely baseless claim that life is known to spring up all over the universe. Apparently in large part because the conditions necessary for it to spring up are present all over the universe.
Now - instead of being all smarmy... point me to a reference that shows that we've discovered life anywhere outside of our solar system.
Then, for good measure, explain what these conditions are that are conducive to life... and I only ask that because, when it comes down to it, we don't actually really know. We have guesses, but that's it.
So, basically - your analogy sucked. It's the rough equivalent of saying "I know for a fact that my car keys exist on planets throughout the universe, because I also know for a fact that the conditions for my car keys to exist are present in a lot of places. Even though I, in fact, only have this one set of car keys."
I suspect that's not what you really intended. But it's what came across to anyone who had followed the thread. Or at least I would hope that would be apparent to anyone reading the thread.
It's over nine thousaaaaaaaaaand!
*coat*
We actually did not exist two seconds ago. Everything you believe in, even the continuity of your life, is a morality play created by God every two seconds.
We don't exist yet. All this isn't really happening. Three minutes from now we will spring into existence with false memories of not only our entire lives from birth, but also of the next three minutes.