Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun | Hacker News Reader

Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

blogs.discovermagazine.com

166 pointsacak82 comments

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

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

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

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.

its worth noting that all this article did was show that hydrogen (not water) was present in abundance? Unless I am taking that wrong. and if i am taking it right, a great big 'DUH' as hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

Neither article focuses solely on hydrogen. The Discover article is about interstellar ice, while the Guardian article above is about the observation of water vapor:

> Scientists from the University of Maryland used Hubble’s wide field camera to analyse light from HAT-P-11b’s host star through the planet’s atmosphere. They found that light with a wavelength of 1.4 micrometres was absorbed, matching the absorption spectrum of water molecules.

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

It's a big one though. You also need a planet with a suitable temperature. Beyond that most of the other stuff seems pretty much everywhere.

It's about 24. There are about 24 different elements found in the least element diverse life forms on earth if I recall.

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?

Is the common idea currently that our solar system's formation was atypical? Or do you just mean "we just need to be sure that's the case" out of due diligence?

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.

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.

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

No, that's how you estimate something completely different - the age of the hydrogen atoms that make up the water.

I believe that the GP's point is something like this: It says "the water is older than the sun", but what it really means is "the hydrogen atoms in the water are older than the sun".

The subsequent paragraphs explain how they go from "age of hydrogen atoms" to "age of the water." If you want more detail than is in the article (which is understandable), then you'll have to refer to the published paper.

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.

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

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.

It's actually not obvious. All elements in the solar system are older than the sun. But water is not an element, it is a molecule: two hydrogens, one oxygen. So it's not a given that the water in our solar system became water before the stellar collapse that resulted in our sun. I could also conceive of the water and oxygen combining during that collapse.

> 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.

Don't forget those trace amounts of elements produced by our pathetic attempts at creating a fusion reactor on Earth! And all the material created by natural fission decay of fissile materials in the Earth's crust and elsewhere...

The "probably" is unnecessary. Until the sun explodes and expels the core of "new material" that it's created by fusion inside of it, ALL the non-hydrogen material in the solar system can be said to have resulted from the explosion of some much older star.

And given that our Sun is (thankfully) still in the hydrogen-burning phase of the main sequence, even if it did explode all we'd get for it is Helium.

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?

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

;)

Fascinating theory regarding the ice, however, regarding the formation:

"According to the idea, the solar system had its origin in a gigantic star into which a smaller, dead, waterlogged star fell. This impact caused a huge explosion which flung fragments of the smaller star out into interstellar space where the water condensed and froze into giant blocks of ice. A ring of such blocks formed, which we now call the Milky Way, as well as a number of solar systems among which was our own, but with many more planets than currently exist."

maybe too far fetched? If it was like that we would have already spotted similar galactic formations outside of the Milky Way

Well obviously if we had, their discovery would have been suppressed by "reactionary astronomers". ;)

That's hilarious. The Electric Universe of the early 1900s.

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

[1] So basically we can say that objects such as Oort Cloud are directly connected with the formation of a system and as such they're tied with the star formation itself?

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Your quote says that water was already there. :)

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

Story checks out.

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.

The last one, you are trying to find contradiction where there is none.

Among serious Christian circles it would be phrased as "learning that first century Jewish culture was different from ours and didn't react the same to certain concepts". They didn't see it as at all weird to identify Jesus with wisdom -- not because they were idiots or missed a blatant contradiction, but simply because they didn't have the same specific hangups we do. Likewise, Jesus identifying as a "hen gathering her chicks" in Matthew 23 wasn't a gender faux-pas.

It's not a gender faux-pas now either in 99% of the world.

I'm not saying there's a contradiction, I just find it interesting.

>> And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

> Light was created on the first day, but the Sun was created on the fourth.

Where does the Bible say the Sun was created on the fourth day? It doesn't appear in the KJV or JBS; is it written like that in another translation?

> Proverbs 8 identifies Wisdom as the first of God's works

Are you saying that you think this is a contradiction because Genesis says Light was created on the "first day?"

> "Where does the Bible say the Sun was created on the fourth day?"

Genesis 1:14-18.

Of particular interest, the text doesn't actually name "Sun" and "Moon". In stark contrast to the mythologies of many surrounding cultures, they're not treated as though they have any personality or volition. They're just lights; their only significance is that they're bright, and are the most prominent bright objects in the day and the night.

(That may be the most scientifically revolutionary/remarkable thing about Genesis 1 -- it treats the entire physical universe as physical objects. This is also the most theologically revolutionary/remarkable things about Genesis 1 -- it doesn't merely say Elohim is better than the gods of other cultures, it says those gods are actually just plain ol' objects that do what they do because God designed them that way.)

So I'm curious, which Christian sects think this means the Sun was literally created at that point? I am a Christian but I'm not all Christians, so that kind of reading is new to me and feels rather odd.

Christian Fundamentalism (which is a decidedly American/English sect, 100 years old this year) is the only sect I'm aware of that takes a hard-line literalist approach to Genesis 1, and even among them there's argument as to whether the sun is literally created at that time or if it becomes visible somehow. (That idea is fairly old -- I was just reading Aquinas' take on it, written in the 1200s: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q70_A1.html )

Many Christian sects (historical and modern) don't view Genesis 1 as specific "points in time". There are various alternative theories -- Augustine (354-430 AD) suggests that creation of all six "days" worth of stuff was actually a single instantaneous event, and that the "days" might refer to the way God revealed creation to the "angelic mind", for example. One theory gaining more prominence is that the Genesis account parallels an older Egyptian account in a subversive way -- using the same structure (including the "days") but setting itself apart in the way it speaks about the details of God and creation (see https://bible.org/article/genesis-1-2-light-ancient-egyptian... .) Viewed from this perspective, the "days" are just poetic structure and have nothing to do with the actual timing of creation.

Biblical literalism is much older than 100 years, though different groups in history may have chosen different parts to take literally.

See also: Highlander 2.

The particular form of excessive "everything everywhere is literal" Biblical literalism most Americans are familiar with is about a hundred years old, and arose in response to a fairly excessive "everything everywhere is allegory" Biblical non-literalism from the late 1800s.

In the past there was typically a balance. St. Basil the Great (~329 to 379) wrote "to take the literal sense and stop there, is to have the heart covered by the veil of Jewish literalism. Lamps are useless when the sun is shining." but balanced that sentiment with "There are those, truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own end."

FWIW Basil emphasized a 24 hour day, but he also describes the elements of air-fire-water "hidden" in the earth: "Do not ask, then, for an enumeration of all the elements; guess, from what Holy Scripture indicates, all that is passed over in silence." (I have quoted elsewhere other scholars from both before and after him who found a slightly more figurative balance point with regard to the same passage.)

He's right, eventhough there have been other groups pushing biblical literalism in history.

Think about it, for a long time the predominant biblical scholarship was catholic biblical criticism, whose point is viewing biblical texts as having human origins. Also remember that Protestantisms critique on the catholic church was that it was too literal in its take on biblical texts, that transubstantiation for example (this is my actual body; this is my actual blood) didn't exist.

And regarding this thread: at least, please stop attempting to do biblical literalism in english. those are not your holy words.

I think Moses would disagree with you :)

Exo 20:11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

On the other hand, Jesus tells us that male and female were made at the "beginning" of creation, when Genesis 1 clearly puts them in day 6. And even Moses' writing in Genesis 2 shows us the creation of man, and then plants, and then woman, which would place the day 3 creation of plants firmly in the middle of day 6. This suggests that what is meant by "day" isn't what we're inclined to think of in our 21st century mindset.

Moses was adopted to Egyptian royalty, and wrote a creation account that subverts the Egyptian account. Reading the Torah without an Egyptian background is like watching West Side Story without knowing Romeo and Juliet, or watching Shrek without knowing Prince Charming. You'll miss all the references, or think their importance is for a different reason than it actually is.

Actually, the naming/anthropomorphized nature of the sun and the noon--among many other abstract concepts--is still a topic of rich debate. While the English disambiguates this, the original text may not. Many things that are translated in the bible as abstract concepts actually make more sense when translated as the name of a god (with the same name in an ancient Semitic landside add the concept). Check out Robert Wright's Evolution of God for better examples

In Genesis 1 it's fairly unambiguously "lights" in Hebrew, with a clear objectification / non-anthropomorphization. They're given proper names in other passages.

There are other parts of the Bible where the translation might possibly more naturally parallel the names of ancient gods; I haven't looked in detail. But not this one.

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?

What other choice can religious people make and still remain religious? It can't be the Word of God if it can be disproven, but of course the goalposts of interpretation can always be moved.

I mean, it's no longer dogma that the universe is written on crystal spheres surrounding the perfect sphere of Earth, because it can't be... but Genesis is still vague enough that it can be handwaved to justify anything else science comes up with (until that has to be conceded to as well.)

If you want to disprove the Christian faith (faith in the historical person of Jesus Christ), then you need to make up your mind about the positive and negative historical sources concerning him, their closeness in time to him (historical distance), and the textual reliability of those sources.

See Paul Barnett's "Jesus And The Logic Of History" for the historical method as applied to Jesus: http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...

I'm not interested in proving it or disproving it, but rather just pointing out that Christianity keeps disproving itself, particularly when it comes to interpreting something like Genesis as anything but an ancient fable.

Using science to try to validate a creation myth thousands of years removed from its intended cultural and political context seems kind of absurd - and a lot of Christians would agree with me anyway, so it's not even that irreligious a point of view.

I would argue this is neither good science nor good religion. Both should accept that the map is not the destination, and that although some models are momentarily useful, none are necessarily true. Genesis is a beautiful story which had a point and a purpose in its time and place but it didn't happen. We know it didn't happen because the evidence against its account is overwhelming (unless you reinterpret the account, but then there's no possible way the original Hebrews meant for the story to take into consideration fundamental truths about geology and astronomy which they had no concept of at the time.)

That said though, I wish there could be a thread about these sorts of things without the incessant drive-by downvoting. Or at least without the censorship of the downvote mechanism.

I think there's a difference between the scientific method (our study and understanding of observed uniformity) and the historical method (our study and understanding of events and their explanation, particularly how one event causes another).

Furthermore, there's a difference between historical study (did it happen?) and frequentism (how often has it happened?).

For example, if we are using words such as "didn't happen" then the best way to explain this would be in terms of the historical method and not in terms of frequentism (there is a fascinating essay on frequentism and how it kept people from accepting Bayes theorem for many years).

The other thing people often do in these kinds of discussions is to reduce all human knowledge (the sciences) to merely the scientific method, which is to confuse science with scientism.

I think it's useful and constructive to credit/discredit the Bible on its most central and crucial claim - the historicity of Jesus Christ - something which is much easier and concrete to deal with than trying to peer millions of years back in time through a particular kind of literary genre.

I don't believe the historical reality of Jesus would give or remove credibility from the Bible. Discovering that the city of Troy really existed doesn't prove that the Iliad and Odyssey happened, either, or that the Greek Gods were real. Jesus could very well have existed, while not being the Son of God.

The most crucial claim that the Bible makes is the one that all religions make - which is that the supernatural exists, and takes precedence over the natural world. It's all well and good to approach it from a historical and cultural perspective, but the leap between Jesus being real and Jesus being Christ is pretty much infinite.

> I don't believe the historical reality of Jesus would give or remove credibility from the Bible.

It would for Biblical literalists and many fundamentalists. For those people, there's no metaphorical dimension to their beliefs -- the Garden of Eden is a real place, Noah's Ark is hidden somewhere on the slopes of Mt. Ararat, the Shroud of Turin is a legitimate historical artifact, and the Ark of the Covenant ... shall I go on?

> The most crucial claim that the Bible makes is the one that all religions make - which is that the supernatural exists, and takes precedence over the natural world.

Yes, that's true, but there's a world of difference between accepting the existence of a supernatural dimension, and requiring that it leave artifacts in the physical world.

> ... the leap between Jesus being real and Jesus being Christ is pretty much infinite.

Not for True Believers, many of whom have zero capacity for abstraction.

> It can't be the Word of God if it can be disproven

Maybe He was just kidding

See Scientism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

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

"unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

(From the guidelines.)

I contend that there is nothing genuinely new regarding religion in this thread. Also, religious discussion on science story submissions are off-topic, and almost guaranteed to turn into flamewars.

then you must have a remarkably deep education on this subject. I congratulate you.

EDIT: in response to your well-timed edit -- there is not currently a flamewar going on. Discussing the intersection of religion and science can be a fast track to a flamewar in the wrong circumstances, but these are excellent circumstances for a reasoned discussion.

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

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.

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

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

I think he meant "only elements down to iron" :p

Hah, you are totally right. Don't know How I forgot/confused the two.

It says that Lithium, Beryllium and Boron are made by cosmic rays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_spallation

This is crazy.

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.

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.

Hydrogen + time = message boards

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.

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

Only one parent comment sure, but it was the second comment on the page at the time, and is currently the longest thread on the page. Nothing wrong with calling it out.

>Nothing wrong with calling it out.

Says who, Jesus?

The down votes are likely from sounding entitled and looking to be offended, especially if it was as you mentioned the second comment.

that "longest thread" includes some moderately enlightening comments which are not at all anti-religion, but are challenging in a good way.

disclosure: I wrote some of them ;)

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

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

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