New Thinking About The Origin Of Comets And Water

COMETS

Comets have always been both fascinating and mysterious. I was really interested in space in my youth but in all honesty, I never really paid that much attention to comets. There was one by the name of Kohoutek, but it was not easily visible. I read a book about it, but never actually saw it. I remember when Halley's Comet, the most famous one of all, came by. But by that time, I was preoccupied with other interests and I did not see it either.

The only one that I actually saw was Hale-Bopp. I was staying in the middle of London at the time, and the comet was brilliant even with all of the light of the city. I watched it night after night and can only imagine how impressive it must have appeared from far out in the rural areas.

But now, I think I can add some insight into the mystery of comets.

We know that the planets formed from a vast cloud of debris that was thrown out into space by a star that exploded in a supernova. Our sun also formed from the material which was left over from that star. The pieces of debris orbited the sun from all different directions. Eventually, through collision and mutual gravity, one orbital plane predominated. This is the orbital plane of the planets around the sun that we see today.

However, most comets originate from far outside the Solar System. They tend to have highly eccentric orbits with orbital planes that may be nowhere near that of the planetary orbits.

Comets have been described as "dirty snowballs", meaning that they are composed of various ices with other debris attached. The usual composition of comets are ices of lighter elements, particularly hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and, nitrogen. Heavier elements seem to be scarce in comets, those that are present could have been collected during previous orbits to the inner Solar System.

As the comet comes close to the sun, a "tail" becomes visible which always points away from the sun. This results from vaporization (vapourisation) of some of the ice, and pressure by the "solar wind" of charged particles from the sun.

Now, we know that the sun must be a "second-generation" star because it already contains heavy elements that it is not yet at the point of creating by nuclear fusion. In other words, the sun formed by matter from the previous star, which exploded, falling back together by gravity to form a new star.

This star exploded in what is known as a supernova. I take a supernova to be an explosion of the entire star from near it's center. But a star may also blast away it's outer layers while leaving the rest of the star intact. This is a nova, rather than a supernova.

By the way, you can read my concept of exploding stars in "The Mystery Of Exploding Stars", about the energy that drives so many processes such as tides in "The Supernova Energy Hypothesis" and the formation of the Solar System from the primordial cloud of debris in "The Planetary Formation Curve" and "The Mars Gap Hypothesis".

The question that I want to ask is: What if the exploding star underwent first a nova, which threw off it's outer layers, and then a supernova, which exploded from the center? The first material ejected, which would be the lighter elements near the outside of the star, would be hurled much further away, because it started at a much higher level, relative to the center of gravity of the star. This material was thrown too far out into space to be pulled into joining the orbital plane of the planets and Kuiper Belt, the small rocky and icy bodies around and beyond the orbit of the outermost planet, Pluto.

This makes sense because the momentum per mass would be higher for material ejected by the nova, than for that ejected by the supernova. This is especially true since the material ejected by the nova gets a higher start.

I theorize that the material composing the bodies of the Oort Cloud, ices of the lighter elements as described above, originated with the material thrown off the previous star by a nova. The material which now makes up the sun and the vast majority of the planetary mass was ejected by a later supernova, when the star finally exploded from it's center.

This scenario ideally explains the present structure of the Solar System, and the Oort Cloud sorrounding it but far beyond it. If the ices of lighter elements composing the Oort Cloud was thrown outward by the same supernova as the planetary material, then why was it thrown so far past the rest of the material that formed the Solar System? I find that the Solar System and the Oort Cloud far beyond, as it exists today, is actually a model of the supernova, and earlier nova, that took place in the previous star.

There is a vast distance gap between the practical outer limits of the Solar System, the Kuiper Belt of small icy and rocky objects, and the Oort Cloud, small icy bodies of the lighter elements from which most comets originate. Although short-term comets can come from the much-closer Kuiper Belt, around the orbit of Pluto, the majority of comets originate in the Oort Cloud and can have orbits around the sun of millions of years.

My contention is that the distance gap between the Kuiper Belt, at the edge of the Solar System, is congruent to the gap in the previous star of matter thrown outward from the outer layers during the nova which took place, and matter thrown outward by the later supernova, which was the explosion of the entire star. Had there not been a nova before the supernova that destroyed the previous star, there would not be the Oort Cloud that originates most comets today.

You can read more about the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt on http://www.wikipedia.org/ if you wish, and also the details of nova and supernova. More about the previous star which exploded is on "The Supernova Energy Hypothesis" on this blog.

I would also like to speculate that the previous star which exploded was a diffuse red giant type of star, in it's final stages. It threw off it's outer layers in the nova, in an attempt to regain stability. This would also mean that the matter thrown off the star in the initial nova would get a very high start, which would explain why it went so far out into space to form the Oort Cloud of today.

Since we are on the subject of comets, what about the earth's atmosphere? The atmosphere mainly consists of nitrogen, oxygen and, the carbon in carbon dioxide. It just so happens that these elements also compose many of the bodies that make up the Oort Cloud. It is fairly certain that the water on earth came from one or more comets, I think that the atmosphere can be explained this way also.

Within the last twenty years, the planet Jupiter has been struck by two major comets. What about the last five billion years ( five milliard or five thousand million ) or so that Jupiter has existed? Jupiter, as well as the other outer planets, have atmospheres of methane and ammonia, which are often found also in comets. Could it be that comets are the source of these atmospheres also? I think so.

WATER

It has become apparent to me that the origin of water can be explained in terms of astrophysics. I have never seen this pointed out.

There is a general rule concerning energy that the way in which the energy within a material can be released depends on how that energy was first put in. Energy that is incorporated into the molecular structure by sunlight can be released by ordinary burning. This typically involves the very complex molecular structures of carbon atoms that can be built within plants, such as oil and wood.

But if the energy originated with the supernova which took place before the sun and the rest of the Solar System formed from the debris falling back together, that energy is nuclear in nature and thus can only be released by a nuclear process such as fission. This is because the energy from the supernova went to bind smaller atoms into larger ones, and that binding energy can be released, but the energy from sunlight does not involve the nuclei and is stored in the electron orbitals of the atoms.

A star is believed to only bind smaller atoms together to create atoms up to nickel and iron in the periodic table, which is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System, Mercury is sometimes referred to as the "Iron Planet". Atoms heavier than this are created, not by the usual crunching together process of the star, but by the energy of the supernova explosion itself, but that involves only a brief period of time which is why these elements are much more rare then the lighter ones.

Let me just define my understanding of the difference between a nova and a supernova. Some large stars are prone to ultimately explode, and scatter their matter across space. Some of this matter comes back together by gravity to form what is known as a second-generation star. The sun is such a star because it originated with an earlier star which exploded. Second-generation stars contain more heavier elements that were cooked up in the previous star by crunching atoms together to make heavier elements from lighter ones, in the tremendous heat and pressure in the center of a star.

Some of the heavier elements that are scattered by the explosion may coalesce by gravity to form planets around the second-generation star. If the loosed matter does not coalesce, it forms the clouds of dust and gas in space. This is what happens when the entire star explodes, and is what I understand as a supernova. A nova is when the outer layers of the star are blasted away, but the star does not explode from the core as it does in a supernova.

The word "nova" means new. The Canadian province of Nova Scotia means "New Scotland". Ancient sky observers thought that they were seeing a new star when one lit up as a nova. In the 1980s, there was a wildly popular car by Chevrolet that was called the Nova. But it was not completely a success because, in Spanish-speaking countries, no va means "it doesn't go", which probably isn't a good name for a car.

The idea that came to me is that a nova, the blasting away of the outer layers of a star which typically contain lighter atoms, can also input chemical energy that can later be released. Remember that chemical energy is that in the bonds between atoms in molecules, and does not involve the nucleus of the atom.

Here is a question to ponder: We know that hydrogen can be burned as fuel, in fact, there is growing interest in it. But where does the energy come from? It cannot be from the nucleus of the atom because that cannot be released by ordinary burning, and in any case there is only a single proton in a hydrogen nucleus and so no binding energy to be released.

The energy in hydrogen comes from the fact that it is diatomic. This means that pairs of hydrogen atoms group together in a molecular bond, and there is energy in this bond that is released when it is burned as fuel. This energy cannot be from the sun, because there is no receptor mechanism like the leaves of plants.

The only other possible source of energy, which could have bound hydrogen atoms together in pairs so that they can be used as fuel because there is energy in the bond, is the exploding star that preceded the Solar System. This bonding could not have been done in the center of the star, that would have crunched the entire atoms together into heavier atoms. My hypothesis is that a nova, a blasting away of the outer layers of a star but not the explosion of the star from the core, can impart chemical energy rather than nuclear.

In the section about comets above, I explained my theory of the origin of the comets in the Oort Cloud, which is basically a vast ring of frozen ice in orbit around the sun but well outside the orbits of the planets. The Kuiper Belt, a zone of small icy planetoids, is also composed largely of water ice, is closer to the sun than the Oort Cloud but more distant than the planets.

In my theory, the former star which exploded in a supernova to form the Solar System actually exploded as a nova first. The outer layers of lighter atoms was first blasted away. The nova debris traveled far out into space, because it had a higher starting level, and remained in orbit around the sun outside the rest of the heavier debris from the supernova, which coalesced to form the planets and the sun.

The Oort Cloud is from where comets originate. These are composed mostly of ice, which begins to vaporize (vapourize) when the comets comes near to the sun. Sunlight reflecting and refracting from this vapor (vapour) causes us to see a tail on the comet. The so-called solar wind, the stream of particles from the sun, pushes the tail of the comet so that it always points away from the sun.

My hypothesis is that it was the input of energy during the nova, the blasting away of the star's outer layers, before it later exploded in a supernova, which went to form the molecular bonds of water. There would have been lighter atoms in the outer layers of the star, and that input of energy formed the bonds between two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen to form H2O, or water. This is congruent to the way elements heavier than nickel and iron are formed by the input of energy when the supernova explosion takes place.

Water does not form naturally if hydrogen is released into the air to mix with oxygen. This is because both are diatomic. It requires combustion of the hydrogen to get it to combine with oxygen to form water. The released energy of the hydrogen-hydrogen and oxygen-oxygen diatomic bonds provides the energy to go into the H2O molecular bonds. We can see how much energy there is in the inter-atomic bonds of the water molecule in that it takes energy to break molecules of water back into component hydrogen and oxygen. It can be done by electrolysis, passing an electric current through water so that hydrogen bubbles will emerge at one electrode and hydrogen at the other.

By the way, have you ever thought about how fortunate we are that hydrogen peroxide is not stable over long periods of time, and ultimately breaks down into water? Hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, it is like water except that it has an extra oxygen atom. If this were stable, we would have oceans of hydrogen peroxide, instead of water, and there would be little or no oxygen in the air.

Where else could the energy in the molecular bonds of water come from? It would not have come from the interior of the star or the supernova explosion, these would have crunched the entire atoms together. It could only have come from a nova prior to the supernova, and this explains why there is so much ice in the far reaches of the Solar System.

This brings us to another posting on this blog, "The Mystery Of Salt". It is generally believed as certain that the water on earth came from one or more comets. But what about the salt in the oceans? I explained in that posting why water and salt must have gotten together before they arrived on earth.

Salt, like water, is a molecular union of two small atoms, sodium and chlorine. On earth today, essentially all of the sodium and all of the chlorine are combined together as salt in, or from, the oceans. This leads me to conclude that salt was also put together by the energy of the nova in the same way as water, before it arrived on earth.

What this means is that, while water is common in our Solar System, that may not be true of other solar systems. All solar systems form from supernova debris around second-generation stars, but if the star which exploded as a supernova did not have it's outer layers of light atoms first blasted away as a nova, water may not exist.

I have my ideas about the nature of water in "Water Made Really Simple" on the meteorology and biology blog, www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com . The thing that is really special about water is that it is polar. One side of the molecule is more positively-charged and the other side more negatively-charged. This causes water molecules to line up negative-to-positive so that it can form liquid water and solid ice.

But maybe this provides a view of it's origin. Imagine a vast field of oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the outer layer of the star just as those layers are being blasted away in the nova. The pressure from below could have pressed the hydrogen and oxygen, against the layers above, into lining up in this configuration before being blasted out into space.

When water molecules line up negative-to-positive, in the configuration known as hydrogen bonding that makes liquid water possible, they are re-creating this bonding configuration which took place moments before the molecules were blasted out into space. Some of the oxygen atoms were forced together with other oxygen, and some hydrogen with hydrogen. This is why there are these diatomic molecules in our atmosphere today, as well as water.