
In “Water’s quantum weirdness makes life possible” ( New Scientist, 25 October 2011), Lisa Grossman reports:
Salmon and colleagues shot beams of neutrons at different versions of water, and studied the way they bounced off the atoms – a precise way to measure bond lengths. They also substituted heavier oxygen atoms into both heavy and normal water, which allowed them to determine which bonds they were measuring.
They found that the hydrogen-oxygen bonds were slightly longer than the deuterium-oxygen ones, which is what you would expect if quantum uncertainty was affecting water’s structure (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.107.145501). “No one has ever really measured that before,” says Benmore.
We are used to the idea that the cosmos’s physical constants are fine-tuned for life. Now it seems water’s quantum forces can be added to this “just right” list.
Whattan accident.
Now this is cool!:
Brief notes on ‘anomalies’ of water:
Just how ‘surprising’ this ability is, of water to ‘dance’ with protein molecules, is illustrated by realizing just how dramatic this change is in the thermodynamic behavior of water. Contrary to popular belief, ‘just add water’ does not make life inevitable for any exo-planet we may find:
Verse and Music:
Flyleaf – Chasm (Living Water)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-BvOuE7wfw
Alison Krauss – Down in the River to Pray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgVL-rBq9Fw
John 4:10
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”