We Are Indeed Made of Starstuff
Earth’s Water Is Much Older Than the Sun, Carnegie Institution for Science
“Our findings show that a significant fraction of our solar system’s water, the most-fundamental ingredient to fostering life, is older than the Sun, which indicates that abundant, organic-rich interstellar ices should probably be found in all young planetary systems,” Alexander said.”
Water On Earth Is Older Than Our Sun, University of Exeter
“A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun — raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed.”
Keith’s note: This is a rather profound finding – the sort of thing that would make Carl Sagan excoted – something that you’d think a lot of people would like to know about. The Carnegie Institution for Science notes: “This research was supported by the NSF, the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, NASA Astrobiology, NASA Cosmochemistry and NASA.”. Yet no mention is made at @AstrobiologyNAI, astrobiology.nasa.gov, science.nasa.gov, or at NASA.gov. The word “inept” once again comes to mind with regard to NASA’s Astrobiology program.
This is a nice piece of research, but the answer to the question they were posing was answered in the 1970s. D. Black discovered a neon isotopic signature, Neon E (for extrasolar), that he said had to have been brought into the forming solar system in interstellar grains that were not heated sufficiently to drive this mobile gas away. Subsequent work at the University of Chicago verified this model by discovering oxygen isotopic anomalies that also predated the solar system. It would be surprising then if water and other compounds that were certainly in those grains did not survive. The question of what fraction of the Earth’s water is pre-solar is a separate and interesting question.
Perhaps not completely inept – they did fund this research.
Carl Sagan indeed had a tendency to get “excoted” about this kind of thing.
Make great discovery – eh.
Fail to tweet about it – INEPT!