Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.7101m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #71.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.178
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
We humans, and all life on Earth, are aqueous beings. Water's chemical properties and the way it responds to changes in temperature make it an
ideal medium for biological activity. Water and life are connected on
many scales, from the interstellar medium to microbial habitats, and
through many processes, astrophysical, geological, geochemical, and
biological. Because of the high abundance of water ice in the
interstellar medium, water has played a vital role in physical and
chemical processes that have lead to the formation of astrobiologically
important molecules. Much of this material made its way into our solar
system and may be preserved in comets and meteorites. Cosmically,
water is not uniformly abundant, and its incorporation into Earth-size
planets is not necessarily constant.
An important debate in the understanding of the early Solar System
concerns the origin of the Earth's water, whether the source was
indigenous or exogenous. Measurements of D/H ratios for potential
reservoirs- comets, asteroids (as sampled by meteorites) and the solar
nebula provide the starting basis for understanding potential sources.
Dynamical models of terrestrial planets formation suggest that
Mars-sized planetary embryos might deliver sufficient water to the
Earth from the asteroid belt, and that the fractional cometary
contribution might be small. However, this is not consistent with
Earth noble gas abundances. In addition, the standard against which the
cometary D/H is measured, ocean water, may have changed over time
because of various fractionation processes and would not represent
Earth's primordial water. This presentation will introduce the issues
and controversies to lead into the more detailed exploration of water
on habitable worlds during this topical session.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration through the NASA Astrobiology Institute under
Cooperative Agreement No. NNA04CC08A issued through the Office of Space
Science.
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