How Water Forms in Interstellar Space at 10K 270
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)."
Re:Am I the only person? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Am I the only person? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Am I the only person? (Score:4, Informative)
10K is not vague. It is 10 Kelvin
Re:Am I the only person? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Am I the only person? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And the next question will be.... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure looks that way (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Close, but not quite correct (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Sure looks that way (Score:3, Informative)
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.