Suggests comet bombardment contributed to forming oceans
From the European Space Agency: Did Earth’s oceans come from comets?
ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory has found water in a comet with almost exactly the same composition as Earth’s oceans. The discovery revives the idea that our planet’s seas could once have been giant icebergs floating through space.
The origin of Earth’s water is hotly debated. Our planet formed at such high temperatures that any original water must have evaporated. Yet today, two-thirds of the surface is covered in water and this must have been delivered from space after Earth cooled down.
Comets seem a natural explanation: they are giant icebergs travelling through space with orbits that take them across the paths of the planets, making collisions possible. The impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 was one such event. But in the early Solar System, when there were larger numbers of comets around, collisions would have been much more common.
However, until now, astronomers’ observations have failed to back up the idea that comets provided Earth’s water. The key measurement they make is the level of deuterium – a heavier form of hydrogen – found in water.
All the deuterium and hydrogen in the Universe was made just after the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago, fixing the overall ratio between the two kinds of atoms. However, the ratio seen in water can vary from location to location. The chemical reactions involved in making ice in space lead to a higher or lower chance of a deuterium atom replacing one of the two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule, depending on the particular environmental conditions.
Thus, by comparing the deuterium to hydrogen ratio found in the water in Earth’s oceans with that in extraterrestrial objects, astronomers can aim to identify the origin of our water.
All comets previously studied have shown deuterium levels around twice that of Earth’s oceans. If comets of this kind had collided with Earth, they could not have contributed more than a few percent of Earth’s water. In fact, astronomers had begun to think that meteorites had to be responsible, even though their water content is much lower.
Now, however, Herschel has studied comet Hartley 2 using HIFI, the most sensitive instrument so far for detecting water in space, and has shown that at least this one comet does have ocean-like water.
“Comet Hartley’s deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio is almost exactly the same as the water in Earth’s oceans,” says Paul Hartogh, Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, who led the international team of astronomers in this work.
The key to why comet Hartley 2 is different may be because of where it was born: far beyond Pluto, in a frigid region of the Solar System known as the Kuiper Belt.
The other comets previously studied by astronomers are all thought to have formed near to Jupiter and Saturn before being thrown out by the gravity of those giant planets, only to return much later from great distances.
Thus the new observations suggest that perhaps Earth’s oceans came from comets after all – but only a specific family of them, born in the outer Solar System. Out there in the deep cold, the deuterium to hydrogen ratio imprinted into water ice might have been quite different from that which arose in the warmer inner Solar System.
Herschel is now looking at other comets to see whether this picture can be backed up.
“Thanks to this detection made possible by Herschel, an old, very interesting discussion will be revived and invigorated,” says Göran Pilbratt, ESA Herschel Project Scientist.
“It will be exciting to see where this discovery will take us.”
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One of the wilder theories I’ve ever stumbled across is the expanding earth theory, where continental drift is explained by the earth increasing in volume over the aeons. I found it a novel idea, but the mechanism seemed missing. Yet, being at the bottom of a gravity well, we must have accumulated some amount of matter in the last few billion years. Does anyone have a rough estimate as to the amount we capture annualy?
Dave Springer says in reponse to the assertion that water comes from cooling magmas:
“Yeah well most posters here don’t know that the water in those magmas comes from the ocean when crust is recycled back into the mantle at underwater subduction zones.”
I think you are wrong.
Magmas contain water in and of themselves, albeit less than those adjacent to subduction zones. Even magmas rising directly from the mantle contain water. Original earth-derived water was transferred to the crust and out, as the earth’s early crust differentiated and cooled. The formation of this crust was not complete for some time, so the water probably remained in the crust some time after the earth formed. It thus want ‘evaporated off’ in the early hot earth.
The paper you refer to does not address water geneated from magma outside of subduction zones; because the earth’s crust has now already cooled and differentiated, this process is much reduced, however non-subduction related magmas are still expelling water, and are theorised to have some role in the development of intra-contintental springs for example, and for eg opal formation.
Government science – big bang, dark matter, black holes, snowball comets & global warming
Try some non-government science – check out the Electric Universe! http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
They have lots of great videos on youtube. You will love it!
Anthony,
Interesting to see the theories coming out.
If you calculate back, then the planet at formation had about 2 kilometers of water which would not allow steam to escape by the simple fact that pressure would change any gases to liquids.
Rotation of the planet was faster but having dense salts would give the density of NOT having the water fly off the planet. The huge amount of water also, as today only allow solar penetration to go so far as the salts act to prevent solar rays penetration and surface evaporation creating the NON-TOXIC atmosphere that we evolved into.
This is a massive chunk of ICE hitting a newly formed tiny molten planet.
Anthony,
Lack of evidence is just as important as having actual evidence.
The lack of meteor strike evidence(like we have on the moon).
Salt deposits all over the planet.
The wave formation of when rock is being formed shows compression exerting down as well as the upwelling.
Older volcanoes show the rock formation as not as porous as today surface volcanoes.
Oil deposits around the planet were theorized to be of underground streams.
Sand. Where did that come from if the pressure on porous rocks did not implode much of them?
Ice core samples only being in the millions of years.
This planet is extremely more complex when factoring in the circumference differences and speed difference as you go from the equator to the poles due to planetary rotation. Now add in the land mass height difference at those different speeds.
These are not factored in with temperature data or climate models.
The Great Salt Lake’s water doesn’t match the chemical composition of ice comets–it even has mercury. It’s salt obviously came from the basin that collects its water. Same for the ocean.
Blockheaded at 832 says: “There is not (nor, dare I say, will there ever be) a single scientific fact or observation that contradicts anything in the Scriptures.”
I would respond that there never has been a more naive and absurd claim than that. There is hardly a chapter in the Bible containing an account which does not directly contradict some other account or other version of the same story. Anyone who takes the trouble to compare the gospels for example, will encounter endless contradictions. Obviously Blockheaded has never read the Bible. He hasn’t even read the first chapter of Genesis, which tells how the sun was created on the fourth day–three alternations of day and night passed before the creation of the sun.
And the Flood: Noah gets stuck on top of the highest mountain (bad luck), and while stuck, sends out a bird that comes back with an olive twig, growing higher than his mountain. Par for the course. And the water just disappears. And Blockhead believes it, and that to doubt it is unscientific. The numerous inner contradictions of the flood myth can be resolved by assuming a conflation of two versions, and we can also see how the ark story derived from Sumerian and Babylonian versions. But none of this explains where all the water went, or came from. The colossal ignorance–geophysical, anthropological, linguistic, archeological, zoological (how did the kangaroos get to Australia?)! Blockheads are a disgrace to this thread.
–AGF
Did Earth’s oceans come from comets?
Did comets come from Earth’s oceans?
=
Does rising CO2 causes global warming?
Does global warming causes rising CO2?
Views;
a) Earth resident H2 and O2 chemically combined to create earth resident water
b) Water came from extraterrestial sources
c) Water was always here from the earliest formations of earth
d) ????? (other views?)
The science process continues. Interesting to see the discourse. It does not get any better than this.
John
Since the Oort cloud is thought to be a remnant of the original protoplanetary disc that formed around the Sun approximately 4.6 billion years ago and is thought to be the source of our solar system’s comets, then the Earth should also have been composed of the same elements, originally. Evaporation due to heat does not produce escape velocity so the H2O should still be here. Unless, of course, we have been bombarded by interstellar comets or in the unlikely event that the water was all in one place and was blasted off of the planet by an impact that did give it escape velocity. Seems likely we got our H2O from both sources to one degree or another.
This would then require that all solar system bodies with sufficient gravity to maintain an atmosphere have water somewhere in their planetary make up or still burried in their geology if too small to maintain an atmosphere in the event that it “boiled off”. Recent info says even our moon has some water.
A G Foster says:
October 7, 2011 at 6:00 am
Blockheaded at 832 says:
Pejoratives, really?
There is hardly a chapter in the Bible containing an account which does not directly contradict some other account or other version of the same story
Sorry, I seem to have a different bible than the one you use (mine has the word “Holy” on the outside). Either that, or you are making incredible assumptions when you read.
Obviously Blockheaded has never read the Bible.
Obviously, you are an expert on all thing Scriptural, and I must concede.
He hasn’t even read the first chapter of Genesis, which tells how the sun was created on the fourth day
You simply lie, or you parrot the lies of your esteemed commentaries. It does not say the sun was created on the fourth day. If the words “formed”, “made” and “let there be” mean the same thing as “create”, then words are useless as a means of communication.
The word “create” in Genesis 1 refers to:
1. The original creation, the former heaven and earth – vs 1.
2. The creation of soul life (Heb. nephesh chai – living, breathing souls), first in great whales, in the present heaven and earth. – vs 21.
3. The creation of Adam in the image of God, who is spirit, according to John 4:24 – vs 27.
BTW, there is mention in 2 Peter 3 of a new heaven and earth to come, which will make it the third. Thankfully, that is promised because this present earth is predicted to melt with fervent heat.
And the Flood: Noah gets stuck on top of the highest mountain
We are talking about two different floods. In the flood of Noah, not everyone perished. In the flood between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, the world (Gr. kosmos – the inhabited world) perished. Not one inhabitant survived according to 2 Pet 3:5, 6.
(bad luck)
So you prefer the philosophy of luck to the revelation of truth by an almighty, loving God. I hope you find that satisfying. I’m fairly certain the luck religion has no credibility in real science. Prediction of the future based on statistics is inherently the same religion. Que sera, sera, as the Stoics would say.
But none of this explains where all the water went, or came from
None of what?
Based on some of the discussion above, and some of the links, there is an abundance of possible sources for both the flood of Genesis 1:1-1:2 and the flood of Noah. How they might have occurred is another question, and would only be so much speculation. Where the water went is the inverse question, and has the same answer.
If there is a God, and you cannot detect him in the natural realm by any sense or mechanical augmentation of sense, then there must be another realm, a spiritual realm, invisible. And if such a spiritual realm exists, then it is quite plausible that things in the natural realm can be affected by things in the spiritual realm, and especially so if the spiritual is the cause or source of the natural. If there were such floods as the Scriptures describe, their cause may not necessarily have any ultimate natural explanation.
Since science is based on observation of physical matter and processes, its ability to explain, describe, or predict spiritual matters is not possible. Every honest scientist both past and present understands this, and many of them have attested to or do attest to the existence of two realms. It is not logical to dismiss the existence of a spiritual realm because you cannot detect it by your five senses. If you are simply “all scientific” or “all senses”, then you have to admit you don’t know if a spiritual realm exists. Its existence is not disprovable nor provable by the scientific method.
The original creation has no natural explanation, and neither does any form of life. The same is true for a thousand other invisible things that tender-hearted people value, like love, peace, joy…
For what it is worth (and for whomever may find it interesting) the primordial gas cloud from which the solar system condensed was probably not far from thermal equilibrium. The gas atoms and molecules all had the same average temperature, meaning that the heavier atoms would have been moving slower.
When the gravity-driven condensation started, the slower-moving atoms would have condensed more rapidly, producing higher concentrations of slower (i.e. heavier) atoms towards the center.
The consequence of this would have been metals (silicon, iron) concentrated closest to the center, and lighter molecules (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen) further out. Furthest out would be mostly hydrogen, depleted even of the deuterium (‘heavy hydrogen’) nucleus.
“Blockheaded” is one dimension better than “Squareheaded.” You should be flattered.
I lie? Here it is (AV):
Gen 1:
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Notice that the sun “rules” over the day; it does not cause it. To understand that the sun is responsible for daylight in spite of the fact that the dawn always appears before the sun rises, one must be aware than night is caused by being in the shadow of the sun, and that the sun revolves around a globular earth. Ancient man had no way of knowing that without some pretty advanced geometrical concepts combined with information from the Phoenicians. According to Herodotus Phoenician sailors circumnavigated Africa, and reported that they saw the sun in the northern sky–6th century BC. The brighter Greeks of the time were able to make sense out of that datum, but it took a few centuries for it to make its way to mainstream Jewry, as the Book of Enoch shows.
Accordingly the only intellectually honest interpretation is that the biblical science represented the best science of the day. It was mainly concerned with making the creation monotheistic, and it succeeded quite adequately. There was nothing “spiritual” about this creation. –AGF
Queue dramatic TV show score ….
The comet in the photo reminds me of “The Planet Killer.”
About the same size.
A G Foster says:
October 7, 2011 at 12:05 pm
“Blockheaded” is one dimension better than “Squareheaded.” You should be flattered.
You dissimulate.
I lie? Here it is (AV):
And “create” appears in which of those verses?
Notice that the sun “rules” over the day; it does not cause it.
“Ruling” is to have dominion over or domain. It is not an explanation of a physical property, or the expression of some physical relationship. You are just making stuff up, saying this verse describes a causal relationship. You could be a theologian.
To understand that the sun is responsible for daylight in spite of the fact that the dawn always appears before the sun rises, one must be aware
“set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth” sounds like a pretty good understanding of what we call daylight and night-light to me.
Ancient man had no way of knowing that without some pretty advanced geometrical concepts
There you go again, claiming to know what everyone has known.
Adam had a pretty good relationship with God for a time; one can suppose that he and God would have talked things over. Adam also lived long enough to have met Noah, I think, and could have passed along a mountain of information. None of it recorded on cuneiform. And then there was Moses, with whom God talked face to face, and …
Knowing how the dawn appears before the sun crests or knowing if the earth is round or flat is pretty inconsequential to the vast majority of people. Not everyone invents superstitious nonsense to explain things they don’t understand. Lots of people just say “I don’t know”. Lots of people don’t write down what they do know.
Accordingly the only intellectually honest interpretation is that the biblical science represented the best science of the day
If God bothered to author a scientific book for you or anyone in the ancient world, we’d all be out of jobs, and a big part of the fun in life would be gone. There is no such thing as “biblical science” from what I can tell. You are just making stuff up to imply there is.
The Bible is not a scientific book, It is not a carpentry book, a political book, or a religious book, or any other kind of book with which you are familiar. it is a spiritual book; the words of it are of spiritual origin (not natural or man-made), pertain to spiritual matters, and are addressed to people who need and want answers about invisible, spiritual things. It is apparently not addressed to you.
Accordingly, if that is the case, your honest response would be to in no wise attempt to explain the Scriptures to anyone else. The fact is, you cannot explain them. Your dishonest response will be to continue to mishandle, to falsely represent, and to deride and berate things which you know nothing about.
Since the Bible is a spiritual book, you will not understand it without help. Of great help is the gift of holy spirit, which God has given and will give to anyone who believes him. It is something you were assuredly born without, thanks to Adam. Your shortcoming can be corrected…
A G Foster at October 6, 2011 at 3:11 pm says:
A powdery snowball hurled 10 miles a second will leave a mark on my face, and I think on the face of the moon. And the landscape can sit untouched for a million years. I find it hard to believe there would be no trace of these little comet-smiles on the lunar surface. –AGF
Dear A G Foster,
A little perspective please.
Yes, most certainly a snowball of the type you or I might create in having our annual snowball fight would indeed blow your head off at that velocity and thus energy.
But you are making an assumption about relative density.
A plasma that is at 100,000 degrees Celsius but that has the density of near-space may not even feel warm to the touch (assuming your hand and that near-space-density plasma could simultaneously coexist in the same location).
The term “snowball” or “dirty snowball” does not connote anything about a comet having the same density as the snowball you and I are familiar with.
So, no, you cannot simply conclude that a “powdery snowball hurled [at a velocity of] 10 miles a second will leave a mark on my face”.
How dense was that snowball?
Was it the density of Kleenex or of raw cotton? Yes, even those might leave a mark, I agree, if they hit you at 10 miles a second.
But you’re going to have to give me some figures about the comets we are talking about before I will believe your statement “carte blanche”.
RoHa at October 6, 2011 at 4:52 pm says:
The comets are trying to drown us?
We’re doomed!
Dear RoHa,
It’s called WATERWORLD.
You are right, in time, we are doomed.
Unless we can join the whales.
Frank posits a carbon envelope that holds the ice together. As I understand it, the plasma only comes into play when the comets enter the atmosphere, which doesn’t apply to a lunar impact. So I’m inclined not to accept the burden of providing a minimum density for the ice–I don’t know enough about the physical chemistry of water to do that. This is just one piece of the theory that seems contrived. Even if the ice and craters vanished, what becomes of this carbon envelope? The moon should be plastered with carbon splotches. —AGF
@moderators:
since when is all the bible chatter allowed here?
[Moderation has always been done with a light touch at WUWT. That is one of this site’s strengths. If it gets out of hand, we will fix it. ~dbs, mod.]
I’m not sure how this is relevant. In any case the earth’s water, along with every other bit of it, came from “space” since all the elements heavier than hydrogen, helium, and lithium were created through fusion in dying stars that died long before our solar system formed.
I think the quest for where the water comes from miss one central point: Water is not a chemical element and it therefore don’t need to have existed as water from the start.
Water is made up of hydrogen and oxgen. If hydrogen and oxygen originally were chemically bound to other minerals, for example carbon in CO2 and methane (CH4), like we see on Titan, the origin of water on the Earth could very well be from the reformation from those sources.
@Dave:
since when is all the bible chatter allowed here?
You missed the point of the discussion. A G F could be working for the UN, the IPCC, the CCCP, Dr. Mann, Dr Hansen, et. al., and his arguments and techniques would be exactly the same. The discussion demonstrates in part how religion is born and bred. By these things people are deceived and enslaved, even smart ones. It has been going on for thousands of years.
The tenants of CAGW form a religion (man-made doctrine), and the cause is replete with false apostles, false prophets, and followers akin to parrots, zombies, and unholy crusaders. Should they successfully proselytize your country or town, your individual submission and sacrifice will be extracted (at the point of a gun) to appease Gaia or whatever the {insert offensive, derogatory word}’s name is. I exaggerate not.
Spend some time and get to know your enemy. You live in a unique period of time in which freedom may only be a temporary enjoyment.
The comets came from the earth’s oceans, not the other way around. This happened roughly 4,600 years ago.
No, that is not a correct reading of it at all. The Earth’s first atmosphere included large quantities of Hydrogen until the Solar Wind stripped it away and propelled it into the outer Solar System. With the loss of the lighter gases, the Earth’s second atmosphere was overwhelmingly dominated by Carbon dioxide, and this was an atmosphere about 100 times more massive than today. Aerobic life subsequently removed this gargantuan quaantity of Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, giving us Earth’s third atmosphere in which Carbon dioxide is only a very small trace component rather than nearly 95-98 percent of 100 atmospheres. There has always been and remains a question about how much of the Oxygen in the early atmospheric Carbon dioxide may have been chemically reprocessed by inorganic and organic processes along with other compounds such as Methane to produce the water in the Earth’s present oceans? Water compounded by chemical and biochemical processes on the Earth is expected to have a different isotopic composition than water compounded in interstellar space and accreted from the interstellar nebulae, proto-planetary disk, and the later comets. If research should find that water compounded on the Earth is a small proportion of the total water on the Earth, such informaton is important to understanding the chemical evolution of the planet. The article is discussing a comparison of istopic compositon which may arguably imply the vast bulk of the water in the Earth’s oceans have an isotopic signature indicating that part of the water was compounded in extraterrestial sources such as the stars and not in the terrestrial environment suchas a reprocessing of the earlier Carbon dioxide rich atmospheres.
[POSTS IN ALL CAPS ARE SHOUTING – CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? try resubmitting sans capitalizing- Anthony]
I already said a long time ago that life came “falling” from the skies….
“Looking at it as a scientist, evolution really is a long chain of many, many chance meetings and interactions with nature, sometimes even collisions with celestial bodies like comets and asteroids, where it is believed that eventually intelligent life evolved from animal life and animal life from amphibian life and amphibian live from marine life and marine life from the first living cell. The thing is, if you do not believe that there was a plan to begin with, then everything connected to this chain of events really was just a lucky lotto draw and a one in a 100 billion chance or less in each of these stages”
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/why-do-i-believe-in-god