Earth’s water as old as planet?

tjguy: We still do not know how much water is there or how deep the water is. We know the surface is largely water ice. tjguy: BEYOND the asteroid belt? Where is that specifically? Past Jupiter or between Jupiter and Mars? That is vague so I’m just curious. The asteroid belt is between Jupiter and Mars. Many bodies beyond that point harbor water ice, including Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, Enceledus, not to mention the comets. tjguy: how do you really know this to be true? Spectral analysis. tjguy: Why is it just moons as opposed to planets that have huge amounts of water? Pluto has water. Saturn's rings have water. tjguy: Earth is pretty well shielded from asteroids by the larger planets around it. Jupiter is much larger than earth so you would think it would have more water than the earth. It may. We can only look at the outer atmosphere of the giant planets. Jupiter's outer atmosphere is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium. Water is heavier, so if there is significant water, it would be lower in the atmosphere beyond what can be measured directly. tjguy: There would have had to be LOTS and LOTS of impacts – impacts that we do not see happening today. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lro-farside.html tjguy: Remember, the present is the key to the past, right? Or does that only apply when it fits the evolutionary paradigm? The solar system has gone through its own story of development, including the collapse of a molecular cloud, and solar ignition. Zachriel

Zachriel @4

Europa’s surface is largely made up of water. Many moons beyond the asteroid belt are made up largely of water.

Zachriel, it may be that Europa does have a lot of water. Earth is still VERY unique! On space.com, I read this: "The surface of Europa is frozen, covered with a layer of ice, leading scientists to believe there is a very active ocean beneath the surface." So, first of all, at this point it is something that scientists "believe" based on the data they have. They may be right. Probably are, but if there is one thing we have learned from exploring planets, it is that we are usually wrong about our expectations. The most recent example of that was the fly over of Pluto. But we'll assume they are right in this case. We still do not know how much water is there or how deep the water is. We do know this in the case of the earth, although we are still trying to figure out how much water is in the crust itself. Then you wrote: "Many moons beyond the asteroid belt are made up largely of water." Some questions: BEYOND the asteroid belt? Where is that specifically? Past Jupiter or between Jupiter and Mars? That is vague so I'm just curious. Scondly, how do you really know this to be true? Moons beyond the asteroid belt - you mean like Europa? You think there are others as well? Why is it just moons as opposed to planets that have huge amounts of water? Earth is pretty well shielded from asteroids by the larger planets around it. Jupiter is much larger than earth so you would think it would have more water than the earth. I'm not disputing the fact that an asteroid might have brought a little water to Jupiter or earth for that matter, but to claim that is where the majority of the earth's water came from is quite a bold claim. There would have had to be LOTS and LOTS of impacts - impacts that we do not see happening today. Remember, the present is the key to the past, right? Or does that only apply when it fits the evolutionary paradigm? I guess you can tweak it to make it match whatever you want. Also, it seems that astronomers believe the Shoemaker Comet brought water to the atmosphere, but how much of it remained on the planet? crev.info provides their take on this news here: crev.info/2015/11/ocean-theory-all-wet/ Here is a snippet:

The paper admits that temperatures in the habitable zone would have been 440 to 1340 degrees Kelvin. Those water molecules would have needed a tight grip to hang on to the dust. Maybe they “snuck” onto the back side of the grains to avoid the solar wind. The researchers merely assumed that these dust grains would clump into planetesimals and then planets. They spoke of Earth’s accretion six times in the short paper without explaining how tiny dust grains accrete, which they usually don’t. And there’s another problem keeping the traditionalists clinging to their traditions:

However, some scientists aren’t ready to abandon the asteroid hypothesis just yet. That’s because, on top of bringing water, they are also believed to have delivered much of Earth’s so-called volatile elements, namely, carbon, nitrogen, and noble gases, says Conel Alexander, a cosmochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. To explain the abundance of these elements, there would have had to have been enough impacts to also deliver Earth’s water, he says. “That still seems to me the simplest and most attractive explanation.” Ciesla says that the new results will force scientists to re-evaluate the process of Earth’s formation. Perhaps the team’s adsorption model is correct, or perhaps water came to Earth aboard a kind of asteroid that hasn’t yet been found, or that no longer exists[yes PERHAPS! Anything is POSSIBLE! Perhaps it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster!] because it all went into making the Earth. “What we have to do is try to understand what fits and what doesn’t,” he says.

The perhapsimaybecouldness index of all these articles is non-trivial. Of special note is the appeal to what “would have had to have been,” that uses the verb have three times in six words. It also seems a bit unscientific to appeal to entities that have never been found or no longer exist.

A bit unscientific? It's funny how cosmologists are open to inventing/imagining all kinds of invisible unknown things to save their theory. It's all good as long as there is no role for anything "supernatural". So, data can be used to support a claim for stuff like this, but data cannot be used to support a claim for intelligence to support the design, information, codes, machines, systems, beauty, purpose, efficiency etc. of life. Only Material causes are permitted. It is an a priori commitment of Materialists that they cannot violate even if the Intelligence option makes better sense of the data.

tjguy

Andre: but is there a physical sample of water from Jupirer’s moon anywhere for me to see? Not on Earth, no. There is a mission planned for Europa, but it won't return a sample. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-mission/ What's your point? Zachriel

Zachriel We can analyse light from outside our solar system our galaxy the milky way etc..... but is there a physical sample of water from Jupirer's moon anywhere for me to see? Andre

Andre: Yes we easily do this 628 000 000 km away… Are you saying we can't receive light from that far away? What prevents analyzing the spectrum of light from that distance? Zachriel

Yes we easily do this 628 000 000 km away..... Andre

Andre: 628 000 000 km away Are you saying that we can't detect molecules through spectroscopy? You do understand that spectroscopy is simple to do, and the basics can easily be verified. http://www.astronomynotes.com/light/hehybig.gif Zachriel

628 000 000 km away..... OK lunatic. Andre

Andre: What about that water sample from Jupiter’s moon? It isn't necessary to have a physical sample. We can determine its composition through spectroscopy. Zachriel

Zachriel What about that water sample from Jupiter's moon? Andre

Andre: Have you been to Jupiter’s moons to bring back some of the said water? Of course it's impossible to ever sample the material in the Sun, so we'll never know what it is made of, right? Interesting story. By examining the solar spectrum and seeing a bright yellow band at 587.49 nanometres, a heretofore unknown element was detected in the Sun's chromosphere (Janssen 1868). This element was named in honor of the Greek god Helios. It was a generation later before the element was found on Earth, as a decay product found in cleveite. http://www.astronomynotes.com/light/hehybig.gif See Fischer et al., Spatially Resolved Spectroscopy of Europa: The Distinct Spectrum of Large-scale Chaos, Astronomical Journal, 2015 Zachriel

Zachriel Have you been to Jupiter's moons to bring back some of the said water? Andre

tjguy: Funny how that only happened on earth and none of the other planets, but let’s not sweat the small stuff. Europa's surface is largely made up of water. Many moons beyond the asteroid belt are made up largely of water. http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Europa-luna.jpg Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter a few years ago, delivering water to the planet. https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jhora/mirac/f940721a.743.gif Zachriel

tjguy Let us not forget all the water under the earth's surface...... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/12/water-earth-reservoir-science-geology-magma-mantle/10368943/ That reminds me of where I heard that before as well; Genesis 7:11 "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened." Andre

So, was earth originally a hot molten ball of liquid rock that slowly cooled and solidified? Isn't that the way the story goes? If so, how in the world could there have been water there from the beginning? Wasn't the story that we've been fed all along that millions of comets somehow smashed into earth and left gifts of water until finally 70% of the planet was covered with water? Funny how that only happened on earth and none of the other planets, but let's not sweat the small stuff. Now we are told that some of Earth’s current moisture derives from WATER-SOAKED DUST PARTICLES trapped deep inside during the planet’s formation. There must have been an awful lot of water-soaked dust particles in order to amount to something to speak of! tjguy

Where have I read this before? Oh yes.... Genesis 1:1-2 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Now let us contrast this article and Genesis with a comment by Brian Douglas on how unguided evolution aka the materialist creation story constantly has to change to adapt itself to the evidence. Now the questions.... How is it that these bronze age goat herders that wrote all these books over such a long period of time managed to get these matters right? Then why do some people insist that Genesis's creation event is just a poem, it the data actually validates it? Andre