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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)."

4 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Re:5 billion years ago ? by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  2. Must it? by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:5 billion years ago ? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A better question is when will people realize that the Bible never specifies the date of creation. Only idiots take the story literally.