Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Finding: Planets with oceans are common in the galaxy

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That makes them origin of life targets:

Several years ago, planetary scientist Lynnae Quick began to wonder whether any of the more than 4,000 known exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, might resemble some of the watery moons around Jupiter and Saturn. Though some of these moons don’t have atmospheres and are covered in ice, they are still among the top targets in NASA’s search for life beyond Earth. Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa, which scientists classify as “ocean worlds,” are good examples.

“Plumes of water erupt from Europa and Enceladus, so we can tell that these bodies have subsurface oceans beneath their ice shells, and they have energy that drives the plumes, which are two requirements for life as we know it,” says Quick, a NASA planetary scientist who specializes in volcanism and ocean worlds. “So if we’re thinking about these places as being possibly habitable, maybe bigger versions of them in other planetary systems are habitable too.”

Lonnie Shekhtman, “Are planets with oceans common in the galaxy? It’s likely, NASA scientists find” at Phys.org

As we’ve said here before, it is a reasonable idea. If only we could find a fossil bacterium on Mars.

Comments
Retired Physicist: Look up Emmy Noether sometime. A mathematician Einstein admired.JVL
June 23, 2020
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RP is confused. Darwinists encapsulate materialists. The observation of conservation of energy cannot be accounted for via materialism. That's because materialism can't even account for matter nor energy.ET
June 23, 2020
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JVL:
Ah, so you think it’s obvious how the earth came to have water. Perhaps you could be specific as to how it happened . . .
Archaeologists can't do that with artifacts the have studied for decades and longer. And yet the artifacts remain artifacts.
Do you think the water just appeared on earth?
Don't know.
So you think it was super advanced technology? Where are the machines, the labs, the energy sources, etc, etc, etc?
It could have been and the machines and lab aren't here. The energy permeates the universeET
June 23, 2020
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@BobRyan: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It is one of those pesky laws that Darwinists cannot explain” My word you’re confused. That’s physics, not biology, and it’s an observation about the universe. It has to do with time translation symmetry. Every conservation law can be expressed as a symmetry the universe has. Look up Emmy Noether sometime.Retired Physicist
June 23, 2020
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BobRyan: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It is one of those pesky laws that Darwinists cannot explain. I think that's more of a problem for cosmologists than biologists.JVL
June 23, 2020
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ET: Who let the 3 year old in? Ah, so you think it's obvious how the earth came to have water. Perhaps you could be specific as to how it happened . . . And if it was “poof” then science has to live with that. That’s because science only cares about how it really happened. Do you think the water just appeared on earth? What is that saying about super advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic? So you think it was super advanced technology? Where are the machines, the labs, the energy sources, etc, etc, etc?JVL
June 23, 2020
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"Plumes of water erupt from Europa and Enceladus, so we can tell that these bodies have subsurface oceans beneath their ice shells, and they have energy that drives the plumes, which are two requirements for life as we know it." I see. I'm then left wondering how after billions of years there is still water on those small planets. Wouldn't it all have been spewed out by now? Why hasn't the water and the whole planet for that matter become a dead frozen wasteland by now? Should have happened ages ago if they are really billions of years old. How come they still have energy left? And yes, the origin of the oceans is a huge problem for a planet like earth that began as a hot molten core. Why is it only earth that got the water? Why didn't other planets also get a lot of water? Do we see water being brought to earth today? How many meteors would have been necessary to bring the water that we see? It's amazing the things people are willing to believe in the name of "science". From crev dot info: Jupiter: Europa Ultraviolet observation of Enceladus’ plume in transit across Saturn, compared to Europa (Icarus). The plumes of Saturn’s little moon Enceladus are well-known, but those at Jupiter’s second Galilean moon Europa, one of the smoothest objects in the solar system, were discovered only recently. This paper calculates that EUROPA IS EMITTING WATER TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUE MORE THAN ENCELADUS! Europa (top) compared to Earth and Mars. "Saturn’s moon Enceladus is known to have a water vapor plume erupting from fissures across its south polar region. The plume was detectable in an observation of Enceladus transiting Saturn by Cassini’s Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS), but only at 1216?Å (Lyman alpha). Jupiter’s moon Europa also may have multiple water vapor plumes, detected via similar ultraviolet observations of Europa transiting Jupiter (after being discovered via emission features) by Hubble Space Telescope. Comparison of the UVIS Enceladus transit observation to published Europa transit results reveals that Europa’s plumes have very different properties than Enceladus’ plume using the same observational technique. For example, the mass of water expelled is two orders of magnitude less at Enceladus compared to Europa." If Enceladus causes headaches for belief in an old solar system, how much more Europa, erupting a hundred times as much – to say nothing of its neighbor Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system? https://crev.info/2019/05/young-solar-system-evidence/tjguy
June 22, 2020
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JVL Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It is one of those pesky laws that Darwinists cannot explain. The energy that was in the universe billions of years ago continues to exist today. If energy cannot be created, where did the existing energy come from? Darwinists believe it must come about through magical means without explanation, much like the origin of the universe.BobRyan
June 22, 2020
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DaveS @17 No it wasn't poofed into existence, it was spoken into existence. It wasn't magic, it was a miracle.aarceng
June 22, 2020
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Not necessarily, daves. Behe just understands that we don't have to know how they (whatever) were designed in order to determine that they were designed. And if it was "poof" then science has to live with that. That's because science only cares about how it really happened. What is that saying about super advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic?ET
June 22, 2020
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They were "poofed" into existence, if you want to get technical.daveS
June 22, 2020
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JVL:
Where did those hydrogen and oxygen atoms come from? It takes energy to move them and combine them. Where did that energy come from? How were the atoms ‘moved’ into position? Where did this happen?
Who let the 3 year old in?ET
June 22, 2020
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Martin_r: Do you really think, that the water-part was the biggest problem for someone who created the whole universe ? :))) Okay then you tell me: where did the enegy to do all that come from? How was it stored? How was it utilised so as to interact with the physical universe? We are talking scientific explanations yes?JVL
June 22, 2020
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JVL @12 "So, the water was just . . . Created? From what? If it wasn’t created then how was it collected and brought to the earth?" Do you really think, that the water-part was the biggest problem for someone who created the whole universe ? :))) I will never comprehend people like you, i will never comprehend like Darwinians think ...martin_r
June 22, 2020
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Water is an amazing molecule because it is bi polar, one side is negative and one side is positive. That is why so many things dissolve in water because the substance also has either a positive or negative charge. Water will then adhere to the relevant charge of the substance causing it to dissociate into individual particles or thus dissolve.. Many substances do not have an electric charge and thus are not dissolvable in water. The best examples of this are fats and oils. Water has other properties which enable it to change into different states which makes it effective for many purposes. The change into a vapor allows it to transport itself around the planet. So when you look at clouds, you are observing an amazing transportation systemjerry
June 22, 2020
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ET: Water was intelligently designed. They took 2 hydrogen atoms and combined them with one oxygen atom. They did that many, many times. Where did those hydrogen and oxygen atoms come from? It takes energy to move them and combine them. Where did that energy come from? How were the atoms ‘moved’ into position? Where did this happen?JVL
June 22, 2020
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Water was intelligently designed. They took 2 hydrogen atoms and combined them with one oxygen atom. They did that many, many times.ET
June 22, 2020
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ET: Seeing that the Earth was intelligently designed it is clear we understand that the water was also part of that intelligent design. So, the water was just . . . Created? From what? If it wasn’t created then how was it collected and brought to the earth?JVL
June 22, 2020
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I assume there is no answer to my questions. I have asked this set of questions before and never received a coherent answer. Also I did not mention Earth in my comment though it was obvious Earth is a planet that meets all the conditions I laid out. I was just pointing out the shallowness of the exoplanet search which gets a big splash (pun) but is really inane. Nothing wrong is pointing to exoplanets but deceptive without the qualifications. In my past questions I brought up the molecular weight weight of methane (16) and ammonia (17), both deadly to life on earth and. essentially the same molecular weight as water. Yet each of these mostly evaporate into the atmosphere and do not harm. Except the climate advocates point to methane in the atmosphere as contributing to global warming. Maybe they would prefer it settle on the earth's surface.jerry
June 22, 2020
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Seeing that the Earth was intelligently designed it is clear we understand that the water was also part of that intelligent design. As was the just-so Moon and the just-so Sun.ET
June 22, 2020
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ET & Martin_r: So where do you think the water came from?JVL
June 22, 2020
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ET @5 i thought so... the bombardment-just-so-story is even more desperate than the Darwinian theory of evolution ...martin_r
June 22, 2020
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No, Martin_R- Bombardment is the materialistic scientific consensus on how earth received its water.ET
June 22, 2020
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Would earth's aquifers exist if we didn't have an atmosphere? Or if our orbit was out by Jupiter?ET
June 22, 2020
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@Jerry, a large part of Earth's fresh water is in aquifers where it's protected from freezing and evaporating. Aquifers sustain a complex ecosystem of microbes and possibly larger critters like fish. If the surface became too hot or cold, life in the aquifers would continue without noticing the change. (Fish? Think of those eyeless cave fish mentioned here recently. Many caves are far from surface rivers, with no obvious way for fish to get there. If aquifers have some wider passages, fish could migrate through them.)polistra
June 22, 2020
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is there any SCIENTIFIC evidence explaining where Earth's oceans come from ? (and i don't mean the just-so-stories about comets)martin_r
June 22, 2020
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Under what conditions can water exist on a planet and have it able to move around the planet? For example, if it is too cold, it will be frozen. If it is too hot it will dissipate into the atmosphere and not return in liquid form. If the planet is too small, the water will dissipate into the atmosphere and may/probably leave the planet. If is too large it may never be able too form water vapor and leave the planet surface. Could life exist in these conditions? If so how? Water has a molecular weight of 18. What conditions are necessary for it to exist in order to sustain life. Can any old planet sustain life as long as water exists somehow on it . For example, could Mars?jerry
June 21, 2020
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