![]() ![]() Other Old Testament passages refer to springs of the sea. It would have been impossible for Job to have explored the "springs of the sea." The ocean is very deep almost all the ocean floor is in total darkness the pressure there is enormous. Job must have pondered this question with amazement, for although he had seen many springs on the land, he had no experience with undersea springs. The word for "springs" is NEBEK (transliterated from Hebrew), an unusual word referring to the places where water issues or bursts out of the earth. God confirmed his sovereignty and justice by giving what must rank as the greatest science test of all time.Īmong the most thought provoking of God's questions to Job was, "Have you entered into the springs of the sea?" ( Job 38:16a). At a time when Job's undeserved suffering led him to a point of despair, God questioned Job from the whirlwind concerning his knowledge of Creation (see Job, Chapter 38). 623-626 doi: 10.1126/science.One of the most profound and moving experiences in the life of the Old Testament patriarch Job must have been his encounter with a whirlwind. Early accretion of water in the inner solar system from a carbonaceous chondrite–like source. While the findings don’t preclude a late addition of water on Earth, it shows that it wasn’t necessary since the right amount and composition of water was present at a very early stage.Īdam R. The planet formed as a wet planet with water on the surface. The study shows that Earth’s water most likely accreted at the same time as the rock. That, combined with nitrogen isotope data, points to carbonaceous chondrites as the most likely common source of water. The team analyzed five different samples and found that 4-Vesta contains the same hydrogen isotopic composition as carbonaceous chondrites, which is also that of Earth. ![]() Their age – about 14 million years after the Solar System formed – makes them ideal for determining the source of water in the inner Solar System at a time when Earth was in its main building phase. These basaltic meteorites from 4-Vesta are known as eucrites and carry a unique signature of one of the oldest hydrogen reservoirs in the Solar System. The asteroid, which formed in the same region of the Solar System as Earth, has a surface of basaltic rock – frozen lava. To test this hypothesis, they used meteorite samples provided by NASA from the asteroid 4-Vesta. The scientists knew the ratio for carbonaceous chondrites and reasoned that if they could compare that to an object that was known to crystallize while Earth was actively accreting then they could gauge when water appeared on Earth. In order to determine the source of water in planetary bodies, scientists measure the ratio between the two stable isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and hydrogen.ĭifferent regions of the Solar System are characterized by highly variable ratios of these isotopes. They have quite a lot of water in them, and have been thought of before as candidates for the origin of Earth’s water,” said co-author Dr Sune Nielsen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “These primitive meteorites resemble the bulk composition of our Solar System. One hypothesis was that the Earth and other terrestrial planets originally formed dry, due to the high-energy, high-impact process of planet formation, and that the water came later from sources such as ‘watery’ asteroids or comets.ĭr Monteleone, Dr Sarafian and their colleagues turned to another potential source of Earth’s water – carbonaceous chondrites, the most primitive meteorites.Ĭarbonaceous chondrites were formed in the same swirl of materials that gave rise to the Sun some 4.6 billion years ago, well before the planets were formed. We didn’t get them from a late process, as was previously thought,” said Dr Adam Sarafian, a researcher with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the first author of a paper published in the journal Science. Image credit: Jack Cook / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In this illustration of the early Solar System, the dashed white line represents the snow line – the transition from the hotter inner Solar System, where water ice is not stable (brown) to the outer Solar System, where water ice is stable (blue). ![]()
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