mechanism for creating water in space discovered

Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered the recipe: just add
ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds! The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen
out of the dust, and lets it combine with hydrogen.

Until Herschel, there was no way to determine if the water was formed in
space on the spot or if it was the result of comets being blasted apart
by a dying star. Herschel proves it was created on the spot.

Yousuf Khan

***
Scientists discover recipe for water in space - CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe...ex.html?hpt=T2

On Sep 4, 2:18*am, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered the recipe: just add
ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds! The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen
out of the dust, and lets it combine with hydrogen.

Until Herschel, there was no way to determine if the water was formed in
space on the spot or if it was the result of comets being blasted apart
by a dying star. Herschel proves it was created on the spot.

* * * * Yousuf Khan

***
Scientists discover recipe for water in space - CNN.comhttp://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/03/space.starlight.water/inde...

Reality is ultraviolet photons break the water molecule into its two
elements. That is the reason given for no surface water on Moon or
Mars. Some thing does not add up here TreBert

On 9/4/2010 10:38 AM, bert wrote:
On Sep 4, 2:18 am, Yousuf wrote:
Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered the recipe: just add
ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds! The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen
out of the dust, and lets it combine with hydrogen.

Until Herschel, there was no way to determine if the water was formed in
space on the spot or if it was the result of comets being blasted apart
by a dying star. Herschel proves it was created on the spot.

Yousuf Khan

***
Scientists discover recipe for water in space - CNN.comhttp://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/03/space.starlight.water/inde...

Reality is ultraviolet photons break the water molecule into its two
elements. That is the reason given for no surface water on Moon or
Mars. Some thing does not add up here TreBert

Not really, certain wavelengths of ultraviolet are responsible for
breaking up water into its constituent atoms, whereas other wavelengths
will do the same to carbon monoxide or silicon monoxide. Called
photo-dissociation.

So one type of photo-dissociation will destroy one type of molecule but
then they will recombine into a different type of molecule, in this case
the end result is water.

Yousuf Khan

Dear Yousuf Khan:

On Sep 3, 11:18*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered
the recipe: just add ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds!
The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen out of the dust, and
lets it combine with hydrogen.

The oxygen is already there as a gas, as we know. The dust acts as an
intermediary, accepting kinetic energy, donating / accepting
electrons, and radiating waste heat.

Until Herschel, there was no way to determine if the
water was formed in space on the spot or if it was the
result of comets being blasted apart by a dying star.
Herschel proves it was created on the spot.

Comets were not produced in the Big Bang. Water (even dust) has to be
able to be formed in free space.

David A. Smith

On 04/09/2010 12:09 PM, dlzc wrote:
Until Herschel, there was no way to determine if the
water was formed in space on the spot or if it was the
result of comets being blasted apart by a dying star.
Herschel proves it was created on the spot.

Comets were not produced in the Big Bang. Water (even dust) has to be
able to be formed in free space.

David A. Smith

Which is true, but until now they hadn't even seen the process by which
comets accumulated their water. This now shows them how they may have
possibly obtained their water too. There have been various natural
masers discovered throughout the cosmos, which indicate that water is
orbiting around the galactic blackholes, so they too must have formed
somehow.

Yousuf Khan

In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered the recipe: just add
ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds! The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen
out of the dust, and lets it combine with hydrogen.

The press release is at
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Herschel/SEMW76EODDG_0.html
and it's one of the worst ones I've seen. Yousuf and probably others
have been misled in exactly the way I would have expected.

In general, there's no special difficulty making water vapor in
space. You need hydrogen, oxygen, and reasonably high densities, as
exist in most molecular clouds. Ultraviolet light breaks up water
vapor, so you also need UV to be small or zero.

The Herschel observations are of a _carbon star_ called IRC +10216
also known as CW Leo. This star is in a late stage of its life and
is losing copious amounts of matter. The mystery is why a carbon
star should have water at all. In gas flowing from a carbon star,
the carbon abundance exceeds the oxygen abundance, and virtually all
the oxygen should be tied up in the form of CO. Thus there should be
no available oxygen to form water. Despite that, the SWAS satellite
several years ago discovered water vapor around IRC +10216. At the
time, the discoverers hypothesized that the water could be
evaporating from small, icy bodies in a Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud.

What the new Herschel observations actually show -- which is in the
press release but almost buried -- is that the water is relatively
hot and therefore must be located near the star, not far away where a
Kuiper Belt would be. Any small bodies that close should have
evaporated long ago and their water swept away in the outflow. The
authors of the new _Nature_ article
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Natur.467...64
suggest that ambient interstellar UV light leaks into the inner
regions of the stellar system, dissociates CO, and thereby makes
oxygen available to combine with the hydrogen in the outflow. This
strikes me as implausible: the outflow is very dusty, and UV light
doesn't penetrate dust. The authors argue that the dust may be
patchy, allowing UV to penetrate in the clear areas. I remain
skeptical but can't prove they're wrong. One alternative is that
_planets_ are evaporating and providing water vapor or at least
oxygen. Other explanations may also be possible.

The authors' result is quite interesting, as befits a _Nature_ paper,
but the press release doesn't do it justice. It's too bad that press
releases are so often misleading, but by now it should come as no
surprise that they sometimes are.

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

On 07/09/2010 5:34 PM, Steve Willner wrote:
In ,
Yousuf writes:
Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered the recipe: just add
ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds! The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen
out of the dust, and lets it combine with hydrogen.

The press release is at
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Herschel/SEMW76EODDG_0.html
and it's one of the worst ones I've seen. Yousuf and probably others
have been misled in exactly the way I would have expected.

Well, okay, but I'm not sure where my misunderstanding was. The original
article I linked to said pretty much the same thing you just did.

Yousuf Khan

On Sep 8, 12:15*am, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 07/09/2010 5:34 PM, Steve Willner wrote:

In ,
* Yousuf *writes:
Herschel space telescope seems to have discovered the recipe: just add
ultraviolet starlight to dust clouds! The ultraviolet breaks the oxygen
out of the dust, and lets it combine with hydrogen.

The press release is at
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Herschel/SEMW76EODDG_0.html
and it's one of the worst ones I've seen. *Yousuf and probably others
have been misled in exactly the way I would have expected.

Well, okay, but I'm not sure where my misunderstanding was. The original
article I linked to said pretty much the same thing you just did.


i think because H and O exist in larger quantities like gasses, water
can be form much easier than from dust that has to come from
somewhere
else in the first place.

so i think gasses and liquids where made before dusts
that are made of more complex heavier molecules.

my question is how long did it take for carbon,nitrogen and
oxygen to appear in the early universe?

r.y

On 08/09/2010 2:01 PM, Raymond Yohros wrote:
i think because H and O exist in larger quantities like gasses, water
can be form much easier than from dust that has to come from
somewhere
else in the first place.

so i think gasses and liquids where made before dusts
that are made of more complex heavier molecules.

my question is how long did it take for carbon,nitrogen and
oxygen to appear in the early universe?

All of that came from supernovas, and in the early universe, most stars
were likely very massive, so they lived and died very quickly. Thus
creating a lot of material very early on.

Yousuf Khan

On 08/09/2010 2:01 PM, Raymond Yohros wrote:
i think because H and O exist in larger quantities like gasses, water
can be form much easier than from dust that has to come from
somewhere
else in the first place.

so i think gasses and liquids where made before dusts
that are made of more complex heavier molecules.

Also, what they are talking about here is molecules being realtered into
new molecules from which they originally started. Eg. CO or SO being
altered to H2O, via ultraviolet light dissociation.

Yousuf Khan