Water, Pt. 1

I am not sure where this little thought journey will lead us.  But as politics seems to be dominating the broadcast news media and I do not like to handle newspapers (they get my hands dirty) we will explore the nature of water.  I was exposed to a public service announcement this week (I don’t remember where) that asked us to turn off our faucets while brushing our teeth.  The narrative voice intimated that this practice would save as much water as some people of the world are allotted for a two-week period (by natural circumstance of location and weather cycles, not government control). And this got me to thinking about the nature of terrestrial water; where it comes from and where it goes.

For a long time, most astronomers put forth the hypothesis that water came to our planet from space aboard comets, those dirty little ice balls that engross us so.  In their eccentric orbits around the sun, some of these flying igloos would collide with the newly formed planet and over time this occurred often enough to create the oceans and subsequent system of evaporation and precipitation we now call weather.   But I recently viewed a documentary that offered evidence that this is false.  It seems that we are now able to analyze the chemical makeup of celestial water (that water in residence on said comets)  and have found that water hitchhiking around the solar systems on these ice balls contains a different concentration of heavy water than that we find here on earth.  I know what you’re thinking, “But Dale, all water is heavy if you have a big enough bucket.” Sorry, that’s not the kind of “heavy water” we are talking about.

Water is a very simple molecule made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms (ergo H₂O). This is universal.  If the molecule is made of some other mixture of atoms, it is not water.  It is probably the tears my dear departed mother cries from her heavenly perch whenever she sees me writing one of these missives.  But H₂O is H₂O.  However, children, not all water is created equal.  Although it is probably considered politically incorrect to point this out, some hydrogen atoms are a little chubby.  Where a normal hydrogen atom contains only one proton and no neutrons, there is an exception known as deuterium where the oddball (known as an isotope) atom does contain a neutron which makes it twice as heavy.  There are a naturally occurring number of water molecules on earth that are made from deuterium, known as heavy water, or ²H₂O. The ratio of regular water to heavy water here on earth is constant across all water supplies.

With the recent advances in technology that allow us to analyze the chemical makeup of water locked up in the core of comets, we have learned that the ratio of heavy water is different than that occurring on Earth.  Therefore, the most commonly held vehicle for the transportation of water to earth is not the once suspected extraterrestrial collisions with comets.  See, once you demote a planet, you can change anything you want, as long as the science supports it.

This post is getting a little long for such technical content, so rather than boring you to death (or at least an ante-Starbucks stupor) I will pause here and answer the question of the ages next week.

What?  “What is the question of the ages?”  Well if you haven’t figured it out yet, just imagine how surprised you'll be when we answer it next week!