Just Enough Water

Bowser

Bowser

Namaste
Valued Senior Member
I've been watching a series on NetFlix that made an interesting point: The Earth has just enough water to propagate biological advancement. If there was less water, the world would be dry; if there were much more water, the world would be inundated. Considering that it is believed that most of water on Earth came from comets and meteors during it's early development, the exact quantity is incredible. We really live on an amazing planet.
 
Bowser said:
I've been watching a series on NetFlix that made an interesting point: The Earth has just enough water to propagate biological advancement.
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Well, to propagate our kind of biological advancement. With less water we might have evolved with a solvent other than water to carry out our metabolic processes; with more water we might have evolved in the clouds or without the sort of water and cytoplasm retaining features (like cell walls) that we evolved with on our drier planet.
 
Odds are, out of an astronomically huge set of trials, conditions for just enough water will arise, in conjunction with all the other factors, just once out of (a very large number).

Star formation seems very successful, the sky is filled with them. But still the conditions for ignition had to be just right. There had to be just enough hydrogen to coalesce into each star.

And so on.

The universe is probabilistic, at the cosmic scale and the quantum scale. No wonder it is also probabilistic at the real-world scale.

A person is special, and we feel this emotionally. Yet, at the same time, the event of fertilization involved the random crossover of (grandparents') genes in formation of gametes, the random eruption of this particular egg, the random arrival of that particular sperm cell.

With things being so randomly directed, it's almost hard to feel that determinism has a fighting chance of explaining reality.
 
Bowser said:
I've been watching a series on NetFlix that made an interesting point: The Earth has just enough water to propagate biological advancement. If there was less water, the world would be dry; if there were much more water, the world would be inundated. Considering that it is believed that most of water on Earth came from comets and meteors during it's early development, the exact quantity is incredible. We really live on an amazing planet.
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I would have a look into who produced that series. Seems like they have a hidden agenda.:confused:
 
Bowser said:
I've been watching a series on NetFlix that made an interesting point: The Earth has just enough water to propagate biological advancement. If there was less water, the world would be dry; if there were much more water, the world would be inundated. Considering that it is believed that most of water on Earth came from comets and meteors during it's early development, the exact quantity is incredible. We really live on an amazing planet.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen that series, unless it's been on the TV. However I remember seeing a similar show that claimed that there was more water in our planet than on it's surface. Considering how much water there is on the surface, I find that hard to believe. I'm not disputing that claim, just making a comment. When I think about it, without a great deal of subsurface water we probably wouldn't have so much surface water.
 
Aqueous Id said:
Odds are, out of an astronomically huge set of trials, conditions for just enough water will arise, in conjunction with all the other factors, just once out of (a very large number).

Star formation seems very successful, the sky is filled with them. But still the conditions for ignition had to be just right. There had to be just enough hydrogen to coalesce into each star.

And so on.

The universe is probabilistic, at the cosmic scale and the quantum scale. No wonder it is also probabilistic at the real-world scale.

A person is special, and we feel this emotionally. Yet, at the same time, the event of fertilization involved the random crossover of (grandparents') genes in formation of gametes, the random eruption of this particular egg, the random arrival of that particular sperm cell.

With things being so randomly directed, it's almost hard to feel that determinism has a fighting chance of explaining reality.
Click to expand...

What do you mean special . What makes a person anymore special than a cloud of dust ? Humans don't seem to have a clue that it takes all kinds for the whole thing to work . Not just human D.N.A.
I think a moose is special cause of there privileges . You can't go kill em or you be arrested . If you got a permit well yeah , but there hard to get , so the Moose is privileged. As privileged as a human ? Not , but does that make a human more special .? I think not

O.K. I think the pendulum swing of more or less water is bigger than one would think . Consider the start and how it was a bunch of swallow seas. I get the impression there was not as much dry ground yet there was life . So more water to were it covered the earth . That seems like a no brainer . We would still have gills and fins , or fins and bob our heads out of the water .

Now if there was no water then I got no idea , but i could imagine a different source of fuel for the mechanism of life. Don't know how it would all work but there are more things that are combustible than the elements that make water . Although I have heard that oxygen is one of the most volatile substances there is .
 
It is hard to imagine another solvent with anything like the properties of water so critical for the development of life. And there is certainly no other solvent present on earth that even approaches one ten billionth of the amount of water present.

Rich
 
With more water, there would be more habitat for sea life. I don't see how it's such a fine balance. At times there was less and at other times there was more, depending on how much was frozen.
 
RichW9090 said:
It is hard to imagine another solvent with anything like the properties of water so critical for the development of life. And there is certainly no other solvent present on earth that even approaches one ten billionth of the amount of water present.

Rich
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I like how you said that. I don't think there's any other solvents that expand when they freeze, and if water didn't do that there wouldn't be any life on earth either.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
I like how you said that. I don't think there's any other solvents that expand when they freeze, and if water didn't do that there wouldn't be any life on earth either.
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Why do you think that? Why is an expanding solid phase important for the development of life?
 
KilljoyKlown said:
However I remember seeing a similar show that claimed that there was more water in our planet than on it's surface. Considering how much water there is on the surface, I find that hard to believe.
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That's true but it's not free liquid water. It's water contained in minerals like perovskite. The mantle contains a tiny, tiny percentage of water (something like .2%) but there's so much mantle that even that tiny percentage adds up to more water than we have on the surface.
 
billvon said:
Why do you think that? Why is an expanding solid phase important for the development of life?
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Because it floats and allows the water underneath it to remain liquid. If ice was heavier than water and sank to the bottom, there would be no liquid water, as it would all freeze and we would have a very different world today. Anyway think about the implications of it, also there should be much said on the subject if you care to look for it.
 
billvon said:
That's true but it's not free liquid water. It's water contained in minerals like perovskite. The mantle contains a tiny, tiny percentage of water (something like .2%) but there's so much mantle that even that tiny percentage adds up to more water than we have on the surface.
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Yes what you are saying makes sense, but I was thinking there must be some kind of equilibrium between surface and subterranean water and if we had less subterranean water a new equilibrium would have to be created which would probably mean less water on the surface.
 
Bowser said:
I've been watching a series on NetFlix that made an interesting point: The Earth has just enough water to propagate biological advancement. If there was less water, the world would be dry; if there were much more water, the world would be inundated. Considering that it is believed that most of water on Earth came from comets and meteors during it's early development, the exact quantity is incredible. We really live on an amazing planet.
Click to expand...

Not sure I buy that. The Earth has 330 million cubic miles of water. I've seen no studies that demonstrated that if there were just a bit less that the planet wouldn't support life. With 220 million cubic miles of water--for example--it might support a lot less life, but there would still be green zones.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html

~String
 
We live on an amazing planet, or...

... the planet is just right to live on.

When you play a thought backwards, it has amazing implications. When you play a thought the right way around, it becomes.. oh yeah!
 
KilljoyKlown said:
Because it floats and allows the water underneath it to remain liquid. If ice was heavier than water and sank to the bottom, there would be no liquid water, as it would all freeze and we would have a very different world today.
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It wouldn't cause any additional freezing. Indeed, ice that freezes from the top down is a much bigger problem; once ice forms, it reflects sunlight and cools the planet down further.

If water sank as it froze we'd have had fewer ice ages, since the oceans would keep absorbing heat long after the freeze started.
 
billvon said:
To put it another way, our form of life just happens to be best adapted to the amount of water we have. Which isn't too surprising when you think about it.
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The anthropic principal, or a variation of it anyway.

Cretinism creationism asserts that our environment is finely tuned to our survival, when the reality is that our survival is finely tuned to our environment.
 
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