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)."

And the next question will be....

[mikael (484)]

Where do all the Oxygen atoms come from ... I'm guessing fusion from within stars?

Re:

[Ferzerp (83619)]

That is generally where every element that isn't hydrogen comes from...

(note: generally since nuclear reactions also take place outside of stars)

Re:And the next question will be....

[$RANDOMLUSER (804576)]

Yes. All (OK, for the pendants, MOST OF) the post-hydrogen elements come from stellar fusion. In oxygen's case, from helium fusion [wikipedia.org].

Re:And the next question will be....

[kmcrober (194430)]

Pedant, not pendant. A "pendant" is a piece of jewelry or some other hanging object. A "pedant" is the sort of person who corrects someone who mistakenly writes "pendant" when they mean "pedant."

Must it?

[pla (258480)]

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?

Re:

[Ferzerp (83619)]

That and water is relatively easy to break apart, put back together, recombine with other things, etc.

It wouldn't be far fetched to think that only minute amounts of the current water on earth was formed this way.

Sure looks that way

[tjstork (137384)]

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!

Re:

[sumdumass (711423)]

I guess the point still remains "Why must it? Could you justify that statement" .

Even with your understanding of hydrogen, the possibility of it coming from a rock or a reaction with a rock could simply mean that asteroids or meteors impacting the earth in the past could release enough Hydrogen to produce the amount of water on earth. The hydrogen release could be extinguished by now or buried at the bottom of an ocean somewhere where the pressure of the water above it retards the production or release of h

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[TapeCutter (624760)]

"if you have a planet producing new water, then, there's going to be new water vapor, and water vapor does way more greenhouse effects than does CO2."

Sorry but you are repeating the half-truths and misinformation of psuedo-skeptics. The total amount of water vapour in the Earth's atmospere is dependent on temprature and pressure alone. Yes the amount of water vapour present adds ~30 degrees C to the global average but the total amount does not change over time.

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[amRadioHed (463061)]

The problem is that the Earth doesn't have sufficient gravity to hold free hydrogen

But the accretion disk around the primordial sun had sufficient gravity and density, didn't it?

Re:Sure looks that way

[Planesdragon (210349)]

The problem is that the Earth doesn't have sufficient gravity to hold free hydrogen

What are you talking about?

Sure, hydrogen released at sea level will rise to the outer surface of the atmosphere. But that's only because it's the least dense gas in existence, and all the other heavier gases push it up due their own higher gravity. Eventually, the hydrogen would reach a point where the pull of gravity and the "push" of the rest of the atmosphere would even out.

Some hydrogen will get away due to thermal escape (an individual molecule moving fast enough to have escape velocity), but the earth will also collect some hydrogen due to the solar wind and its ordinary passage through space.

I wager that the 1ppm we have of atmospheric hydrogen is a few orders of magnitude greater than the atomic hydrogen present in the vacuum of space -- even if we disregard the amount of hydrogen that has bonded with oxygen in our little dust-ball.

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[Vellmont (569020)]

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?

The problem with that is where we find water. We see a lot of water in the form of comets that couldn't have come from something as big as a planetary body. So the conclusion is water must have formed before planetary bodies. I believe the thinking is most of the water on earth came from comets

both scenarios are true

[circletimessquare (444983)]

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

To be correct..

[UPZ (947916)]

Most of the water seen today is not the original interstellar water intact in its original form. Instead, it has been cycled through organic matter over the last few hundred million years.

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[maxume (22995)]

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 cre

Re:

[MrMr (219533)]

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 [wikipedia.org] - deep ground water) I discovered that there is an 80% chance that I have not been drinking dino-piss after all...

Re:To be correct..

[tygt (792974)]

At first I was tempted to state "water is used organically but remains water"; however this is not always correct.

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...

far out, man

[circletimessquare (444983)]

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

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

That explains it

[cmacb (547347)]

I knew my tap water tasted funny.

How water forms

[suso (153703)]

You don't have to try it figure it out. God just creates it. No scientific explaination needed. Now wasn't that easy.

Re:How water forms

[dkleinsc (563838)]

Actually, if you read the very beginning of Genesis closely, you'll notice that God doesn't create water:
"And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters."

That's before light exists.

All water?

[teslar (706653)]

That's cool because all the water in the solar system, including almost every drop you drink on Earth today

So, what are the drops of water that are not included in the "almost every drop" made of? :)

Re:

[Zcar (756484)]

And is it really "almost all"? Water is a product of many common metabolic chemical reactions (e.g. the catabolism of glucose produces 6 water molecules per glucose molecule catabolized). Similarly, water is destroyed in photosynthesis to produce glucose.

I'd imagine a sizable proportion of the world water supply has taken part in these processes at some point or other.

That's the easy part

[sm62704 (957197)]

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.

Re:Am I the only person?

[gardyloo (512791)]

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.

Re:Am I the only person?

[Ferzerp (83619)]

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!

Re:Am I the only person?

[bunratty (545641)]

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.

Re:Am I the only person?

[Ferzerp (83619)]

10K, not 10k...

10K is not vague. It is 10 Kelvin

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[$RANDOMLUSER (804576)]

No, not at 10k, but at 10K, in other words 10 degrees . [wikipedia.org]

Close, but not quite correct

[Cedric Tsui (890887)]

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 increm

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[gabspeck (948318)]

From Wikipedia:

The kelvin (symbol: K) is a unit increment of temperature and is one of the seven SI base units.

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[ehrichweiss (706417)]

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.

Re:5 billion years ago ?

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

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.

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[Thanshin (1188877)]

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 known theory of Dupe'R'Us.

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[vertinox (846076)]

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 r

Re:

[MozeeToby (1163751)]

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, th

Re:5 billion years ago ?

[TheMeuge (645043)]

So far we have ONLY found life on one planet-- a planet that has liquid water, a single moon relatively large compared to the planet's mass, active volcanic and tectonic activity, a strong magnetosphere, and an active weather system.

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.

/sarcasm

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.

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[boneclinkz (1284458)]

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.

Re:5 billion years ago ?

[Dog-Cow (21281)]

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

So if you can't take it literally...

[Animaether (411575)]

...and it is a 'story'... then would you agree to call 'The Bible' a work of fiction?

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[sumdumass (711423)]

A story doesn't have to be a work of fiction. There are biographies that tell the story of someone's life, in courts, witnesses tell their stories and so on. Actually, if you check, there is an entire section of most if not all libraries devoted to true stories.

I'm not going to comment on whether the bible is true or fiction, certainly some of it is true but Hollywood has shown us that even with elements of the truth, it can still be fiction. But the nature of a Story doesn't make anything Fiction or fictit

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[Entropy2016 (751922)]

You see then, this is why people have to argue so strongly that every word in the Bible is literal. Because as soon as we say that one story or another is an allegory, then the rest of the world immediately claims that the entire work must therefore be fiction. Apparently, it is not possible for a book to contain allegories and illustrations without becoming a complete work of fiction.
I guess all my science books are fiction as well, since they all contain similes, allegories and the like in the aid of explaining scientific principles.

There's actually a much better way to rationalize how a book like "The Bible" is able to contain fact & fiction at the same time...
The word "bible" (not "The Bible"), comes from a plural form of biblion. Biblion (singular) meant papyrus writings (which was the equivalent of a book back then). Thus, "a bible" means "a collection of books".

Now look at "The Bible" .... Book of John, Book of Matthew, Book of -- HOLY SHIT!!! The Bible is a collection of books too!!

That's what we programmers call "encaps

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[Planesdragon (210349)]

Then fuck God. Fuck Him right in the ear. Because he's a sick fuck who won't allow his creations to perceive the truth about their origins, who deliberately set out to deceive us, and I will NEVER worship a sick son of a bitch like that.

?

You, ah, DO realize that God told us all of this, far before we could understand it, right?

Complaining about apparent nuance in the deity's creation is kind of like complaining that your stoner parents are straight-laced professionals now, even though they tell you they were stoners whenever you ask.

I could tell you how easy it is to reconcile the six-day creation with the universe's apparent age without the introduction of deception, but you've obviously made a religious choice to be atheist, and nothing

Re:If that is true

[spun (1352)]

I do not give in to terrorists. Someone who loved me wouldn't send me to eternal punishment for finite transgressions. An infinite and all powerful creator God can not desire anything, for being all powerful and infinite they have everything they could want before they want it.

I'm not an Atheist, I'm Agnostic. It's just that, if the Christians are correct out of all the myriad beliefs, I would rather go to hell than submit to an insane terrorist God, which is what the God of the Christians looks like to me, from their own description of him.

Re:If that is true

[hcdejong (561314)]

So you can just will things into existence?

Sorry, I assumed you knew the term. In this context, 'free will' is in opposition to 'predestination', the notion that God has planned our lives beforehand and we can't influence our own lives.

If man were created without the possibility of sin, he wouldn't be truly free. He wouldn't have the choice of living within or without God's presence. Again, not very interesting for God.

Why would God's sense of right and wrong be any more artificial than yours? And where does your sense of right and wrong come from? And how does your sense of right and wrong differ from the Biblical sense of right and wrong?

atheist?

[Animaether (411575)]

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.

Re:If that is true

[spun (1352)]

Right. Well, there's still the whole "If you don't love me I will punish you infinitely for your finite sins" angle. That alone makes the Christian God batshit insane in my book.

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[Empiric (675968)]

"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.

Probably not the way you think

[dreamchaser (49529)]

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.

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[aliquis (678370)]

Yeah, I didn't like the "must have formed in exactly this way"-part either. They make a theory and it MUST be true? And it MUST have happened in that way only? Right ..