Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun(blogs.discovermagazine.com) |
Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun(blogs.discovermagazine.com) |
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.
Also, why don't they address the implications if the solar system's formation was not typical?
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".
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.
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.
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
"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
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.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe2011072...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_spallation
This is crazy.
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.
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.
Edit: Why all the downvotes? I'm saying I'd prefer we let science be science, without the didactic religion talk, pro or con.
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.
> 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?"
Story checks out.
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.)
> 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.
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disclosure: I wrote some of them ;)
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.
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.
Maybe He was just kidding
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...
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.