Siberian Traps

The Siberian traps are towering walls of rock 1.5 miles high in Siberia. Layer upon layer of rock is layered in Siberia, and no one can explain how it was formed. One man, exiled to Siberia for committing crimes against Russian government claimed that the traps were formed by eruptions from a massive volcano, and every layer is another eruption. Scientists identified the rocks to be basalt rock, a type of igneous rock that is formed by cooled lava. The rocks at the bottom of the traps were dated, and so were the rocks right at the top, and the duration of the eruption was a long 1 million years. This one million year period of earth’s history has a devastating impact on life on earth.

All around the world, a belt of black rock can be found, called the extinction zone. Almost no fossils found under that belt of rock can be found above it, which means a mass extinction must have happened. This mass extinction was triggered by the violent formation of the Siberian traps. The Siberian traps were created by a mantle plume, a mushroom of lava coming up from the mantle that is trapped by the crust. The lava broke through the crust and made a huge lava flow on the crust, like the one in Hawaii, but fifty thousand times bigger. The eruptions happened in the Triassic period, lasting from 250 to 200 million years ago. Coal was discovered in Siberia, suggesting that it was once a swamp. The lava flow would have wreaked havoc to the land, killing off all life in that area. Another silent killer was lurking. Carbon-dioxide was produced by the massive volcanic activity. The increase of carbon-dioxide levels can be proved by fossils, ginkgo leave fossils. Ginkgo trees existed for a long period of time, and remain relatively unchanged throughout its existence. This makes it the perfect candidate for comparison between the past and the present. The amounts of stomata on plants vary with the amount of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, and if more carbon-dioxide is present in the atmosphere, less stoma would be needed. Fossilized gingko leaves of that period show very few stomata, which means the carbon-dioxide levels were very high at that time. In the seas, the waters are warming up, more and more carbon dioxide is dissolving into the waters, stopping oxygen to enter, killing off most sea life.

Purple bacteria thrive in oxygen depleted areas, and the oxygen depleted seas gave them the perfect breeding grounds. The existence of iron pyrites, nicknamed fool’s gold, also proves this oxygen depleted environment, as iron pyrites can only form in oxygen free conditions. Purple bacteria would give off another potent gas, hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is a deadly gas that would deplete your system of oxygen, and at the same time poisoning you as it is also a potent neurotoxin. It would also paralyze one’s sense of smell. This deadly combination deprived all life of its essentials, water and air. Furthermore, methane was being produced. The huge coal reserves in Siberia were burning up, producing a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent that carbon-dioxide in trapping heat. This gas, combined with the huge production of carbon-dioxide made the global temperature scale up by 10 degrees. The warming seas melted ice, methane ice, trapped beneath the oceans, a reserve so massive, that it contains more energy than all of the world’s fossil fuels put together.

After one million years, the eruption finally stops. 95% of the world’s life was wiped out. No coal reserves were found the few million years following the eruption, suggesting that although plants did survive, they did not thrive for millions of years following the disaster. This catastrophe eliminated 95% of the competition in life, leaving the strongest 5% of life to continue to live and evolve. Without this, no mammals, dinosaurs, birds or even humans would ever exist. This shows one thing – What does not kill you only makes you stronger.

Lead

Lead is a very useful metal, and is used in our everyday lives. Lead was the first metal that man ever smelted and used, and still plays a major part in our modern society. The chemical symbol of lead “Pb” actually comes from the latin word “plumbum” which means pipes. The most common use of lead is in the lead-acid batteries. Lead plates are submerged in a bath of sulfuric acid, which causes a reaction, building up electrical energy that can be released on demand as electricity. Lead-acid batteries were invented by French physicist Gaston Planté in 1859, and were the world’s first rechargeable battery. Lead-acid batteries are cheap and have a high power-to-weight ratio, making it the best option for car batteries.

Another popular use of lead is in bullets. Modern bullets originated from simple lead balls, loaded into muskets. Musketeers melt lead and pour them into spherical moulds to make bullets. As the power of the propellant, the gunpowder, increased, the lead balls tend to smear and deform in the barrels of the guns, causing chunks of lead to be stuck in the rifling of the guns that might lead to explosions in the gun. A metal jacket was wrapped around the bullet to prevent that from happening. Modern bullets have two components, the core, made out of lead, the jacket, made out of copper. The property of lead that makes it favourable to be made and used as bullets are that it is a very malleable metal, which allows it to be easily moulded, and makes it stay in the shape of the mould very well. This lets the bullet be as identical as possible to the mould, making it more balanced and aerodynamic (provided the mould is of proper dimensions and in good condition). Lead is a heavy metal, which means that more energy would be transferred into the target upon impact compared to other, lighter metals if they were made into bullets. Lead is also a soft metal, which makes the bullet mushroom upon impact, creating a larger entry and exit wound, which inflicts more damage onto the target.

Although lead has many uses, lead is also a harmful element. Forty thousand American toddlers suffer from lead poisoning per year. Elements like calcium and zinc are important elements in our bodies. Calcium builds up our bones, and zinc is essential to the operation of our nervous system. Lead mimics the chemical properties calcium and zinc upon entering the human body, and would not be detected as harmful substances by our bodies. It would then be absorbed and enters your bloodstream. The blood, carrying lead, would enter your organs and destroy them. The most common consequence of lead poisoning is brain damage. The most common ways of getting lead poisoning are inhaling or ingesting lead. Lead dust can get airborne and get inhaled by us. Lead stimulates our taste buds, and it would trigger our brain to sense sweetness, which means that children might ingest the harmful element without knowing.

Term 3: Under The Hood

I would say that this term was rather boring in the science curriculum. We spent time completing the syllabus for refraction and reflection, and the rest of the time went into teaching ecology and a bit on sexual reproduction. I think that ecology was a topic that was already familiar to all of us since primary school, making this term rather boring. However we still got to learn a few more in depth things in ecology like the different biomes, the definitions like habitats and ecosystem and the terms like mutilation and parasitism. Another reason behind why this term was less interesting was that there were no lab lessons.

One obstacle I faced was to understand how to draw a ray diagram for a converging lens. I was completely confused by the drawings at first, but slowly found my way out through trial and error, again. From this I figured out that science is not all about memorizing, but more of making sense of what you have learned and applying it correctly. It was amazing to be able to draw any ray diagram just by knowing a few simple rules. Moving on to ecology, I think that ecology was a very easy topic, as we already know most of the things taught at this level, which made it very boring. However I cannot help but realize that I was underestimating this topic, as ecology is a very broad topic, and can cover many things.

One of the most interesting works that I done this term in the curriculum was where we had to do our own research on two questions, whether the moons surface is bumpy or smooth, and how mirages are formed by using our knowledge of reflection and refraction only. I roughly knew how mirages was created, by the temperature differentials in the air called the temperature gradient, which caused the light reflecting from the sun on the object into your eyes refract differently, distorting the image and making it look nearer than it is. However I did not know how to answer the first question. I knew that the moon was not smooth as planetary objects can never form perfectly spherical and smooth, and coupled with the fact that billions of asteroids impacted the moon that has no atmosphere, life and water, meaning no erosion, meant that it could never be smooth. I went on to research on this question and found out that one of the most famous astronomers, Galileo, had hypothesized that the moon was rough from his knowledge of specular and diffused reflections. He did an experiment by placing a mirror beside a wall, and observed that the rough wall was considerably brighter from a distance than the mirror, and he thus hypothesized that the moon, being visible from such great distance, must be rough and not smooth, and that if it were to be smooth, it would be invisible from the earth. It was wonderful to think that we can apply our knowledge to discover new stuff by mere observing and applying your knowledge.

This term’s term test would be counted as a satisfying one. I did not lose any marks because of carelessness, which was one of the reasons why I was pleased by the results. However I did lose a mark because I did not understand the question, and I actually put the correct answer at first, but changed it at the end of the test, and got it wrong. I think that this test was finally a well done one, but I have to admit that it was considerably easier than the previous one done in term two.

SUMMARY

LENSES / COLORS OF LIGHT

There are five situations when light reflected from an object passes through a converging lens.



First Scenario: Object distance < Focal Length (F)
Image is upright, Virtual and magnified.
Image is behind object, on the same side of the lens as the object
Usage: Magnifying Glass



Second Scenario: Object Distance = Focal Length (F)
Image is upright, virtual and magnified.
Image is at infinity (No Image), on the same side of the lens as the object
Usage: Spotlight



Third Scenario: 2 Focal length (2F) > Object Distance > Focal Length (F)
Image is inverted, real and magnified
Image is at the opposite side of the lens as the object
Usage: Projector, Photographic Enlarger



Forth Scenario: 2 Focal Length (2F) = Object Distance
Image is inverted, real and same size as object
Image is at the opposite side of the lens as the object
Usage: Photocopier making same sized copy



Fifth Scenario: Object Distance < 2 Focal Length (2F)
Image is inverted, real and diminished
Image is at the opposite side of the lens as the object
Usage: Camera, Eye




There are 7 colors of light, red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo and violet. White light is actually a mixture of these 7 colors of light, and if light is shone through a prism, it would disperse, forming the 7 colors of light. The band of light produced is called the visible spectrum. The light would disperse as every color of light has its own wavelength, and thus travel at different speeds, resulting in different degrees of refractions when in contact with a prism, causing dispersion. Red light has the longest wavelength, thus travelling the fastest, and violet has the shortest wavelength, thus traveling the slowest. Light can be recombined with a similar prism placed upside down in relation to the first prism that dispersed the light. There are 3 primary colors of light, red, blue and green. Red and blue can mix together to form magenta, blue and green can mix together to form cyan and red and green can mix together to form yellow. Colored objects can only reflect the color of light that they are. For example, red objects can only reflect red light, and if green light is shone on it, it would not reflect any light, resulting in a black object. When light is shone through a color filter, the filter only lets colors that it can transmit pass through, in other words, when yellow light is shone through a magenta filter, red light would be transmitted as both yellow and magenta is made up of red light.

ECOLOGY

A habitat is a place where organisms live, a population is a group of organism of the same species in a habitat, and a community is the populations of different species of organisms interacting with each other in a habitat. An ecosystem is a community in with relationships with abiotic factors.

There are 9 abiotic factors:

Temperature and ph: Temperature and ph levels affect the functionality of enzymes and their hydrophobic, hydrophilic and ionic interactions.

Oxygen Content: Oxygen is required for respiration and low oxygen means slow metabolism.

Humidity: Humidity affects the rate of transpiration and is essential for some organisms like epiphytes to survive.

Amount of Water: Affect location of flora and fauna.

Wave Action: Prevents marine organisms from settling and feeding, depleting food sources.

Wind Speed: High wind speed can dissipate humidity and might break certain species of plants.

Light Intensity: Affects the rate of photosynthesis

Salinity: Affects the osmotic balance in marine organisms

Type of Substratum: Affects the survivability of animals and plants

There are five Biotic Factors

Mutualism: Both organisms benefit together

Example: Lichen

Commensalism: One organism benefits from the other organism, but the other organism does not benefit nor get harmed.

Example: Remora Fish and Shark

Exploitative relationships: Predation, patriotism and herbivory. One organism benefits from the other, but at the same time harming it.

Example: Snake eating rabbit

Competition: Two or more organisms competing for one source of essentials

Example: Snake and eagle competing to feed on rabbits

Ammensalism: Substances produced by one organism’s natural processes like metabolism harms other organisms.

In the food web, there is the producer, or autothrophs, which are able to synthesize organic molecules from a source of energy and other inorganic molecules, providing energy for the whole food chain. Heterothrophs on the other hand are organisms that obtain energy from the organic molecules of other organisms. Heterothrophs are not necessarily herbivores and carnivores, as carnivorous plants like the venues flytrap is an example of Heterothrophs that are able to photosynthesize. Consumers, primary consumers and secondary consumers, are heterotrophic organisms that obtain energy and carbon by feeding only. Primary consumers are herbivores that feed directly from the primary producers. Secondary consumers are organisms that feed on primary consumers. Organisms can be both primary and secondary consumers, in the case of herbivores. Decomposers are organisms that break down dead organic matters into smaller pieces to be recycled again.

The carbon cycle is the cycle whereby carbon is cycled naturally in an ecosystem by a few processes:

Photosynthesis:
Carbon dioxide CO2 is being converted to glucose C6 H12 O6, through photosynthesis.
Carbon is then passed to other organisms through feeding, taking in the glucose into their bodies.

Respiration:
Plants and animals alike respire converting glucose into energy, at the same time releasing the carbon trapped inside in the form of carbon dioxide.

Excretion and egestion:
Microorganisms in the digestive systems of herbivores and omnivores ferment carbon rich plant cells, releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the form of methane, CH4.
Undigested food that is excreted contains all the leftover carbon from digestion and respiration to be decomposed.

Decomposition:
Decomposers produce methane when decomposing dead and fecal matter, releasing most of the trapped carbon in the form of methane.

Destruction of Vegetation:
Bush fires burn carbon trapping plants, releasing their carbon contents in the form of carbon dioxide.


Sedimentation and Mineralization:
When organisms die and are buried immediately, they would not decompose and instead be compressed over layers and layers of sediments. Overtime they become fossil fuels.
Carbon dioxide is being dissolved in the seas, forming carbonate and bicarbonate ions that go into the formation of hard shells of marine organisms, and when they die, the shells fall to the seabed and over time be compressed into limestone, storing the carbonate and bicarbonate ions.

Dissolution
In events like acid rain, limestone can be dissolved, releasing the carbonate and bicarbonate ions back into water bodies like rivers, lakes and seas.

Combustion
Stored fossil fuels are being burned by humans, releasing their carbon content back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide, etc.

Carbon

Carbon is the basic building blocks of life. In fact, we are called carbon-based life forms. Carbon comes from the Latin word “carbo”, which means coal. Carbon can come in many forms, like graphite and diamonds. Their properties also vary from one form to another, like graphite, which is electrically conductive, and diamond, which is not electrically conductive. Carbon has the ability to form bonds that are strong and stable, and can form extremely long chains and form infinite numbers of compounds.

Carbon is used in and archaeology in a process called carbon dating. Carbon dating makes use of a type of carbon called carbon-14 to precisely date the age of an organic material. Cosmic rays enter our atmosphere and collide with an atom to form an energetic neutron that would turn ordinary carbon to an isotope, carbon-14 atoms, when it collides with a nitrogen-14 atom. The ratio of regular carbon, carbon-12, and carbon-14 is nearly constant at all times in all living things on earth. Carbon-14 atoms are constantly replaced simultaneously when they decay into nitrogen-14 at equal amounts, keeping that ratio constant. So, carbon dating works by comparing the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the sample with the existing ratios in living life forms. The difference in the ratio would show how much carbon-14 was lost in the process of beta decay, and the age of the sample can be found by using the rate of decay of the carbon-14 atom. Carbon-14 helped archaeologists date many fossils, and in some cases totally rewrite what we know of our planet’s history.

Another one of carbon’s magnificent uses is in the form of activated carbon. Activated carbon is a type of carbon that is made so porous, that it is the most absorbent material known to man. A teaspoon of activated carbon has the surface area of a football field. Activated carbon absorbs impurities in gasses or liquids. The impurities get attracted to the carbon, and are locked in it. Due to the extreme porosity of the activated carbon, it can trap huge amounts of impurities with rather tiny amount of activated carbon. Activated carbon starts out as wood. The wood is heated in extreme temperatures without the prescience of oxygen, thus allowing minerals in the wood to stay in the leftover charcoal, and not vaporized by burning. The leftover charcoal would be exposed to steam and oxygen, opening millions of tiny pores in the charcoal, making it very porous, “activating” the carbon. Activated carbon has many uses. It can be used as water filters in water treatment plants, and would effectively reduce the amounts of chemicals such like chlorine used in the process. Activated carbon filters can also be used at home to purify tap water into drinking water without the need of boiling. Activated carbon is also used in air purification, trapping impurities in the air that might harm us. Activated carbon is also used in gas masks. Activated carbon can also benefit us in our health by trapping drugs or other harmful toxins that we ingested, in the form of pills.

Weather Warfare

Ever thought of throwing a bolt of lightning at your enemy, sending a giant wave upon them or causing a drought where you want it to be? These things are common things to find in a comic book, but now science fiction is turning into reality.

Weather warfare might be the new way that we fight our wars, rewriting the course of history as we know it. Scientists all around the world are racing against time to fight to be the first in artificially produce and trigger lightning. A single flash of lightning can travel at speeds of 60,000m/s, reaching temperatures of 30,000 degree Celsius. Weaponizing and manipulating such a force would be unbelievable. It would be the ultimate weapon of war and making Armageddon that much easier. You might ask, then, if lightning is so deadly, why won’t modern civilization be destroyed by natural lightning during lightning storms? The fact is that only 1% of all lightning ever touches the ground, and that things on the ground do get hit by lightning from time to time. Controlling lightning might be closer than you think.

A man made lightning could be produced by putting 2 Tesla Coils beside each other, pumping current into them would lead to an arc, crossing from one Tesla Coil to the other, or in other words, creating lightning. A Tesla Coil is a resonant transformer circuit invented by Nikola Tesla, a genius of electricity, often known as the great rival of Thomas Edison. It is used to produce high voltage, relatively high current, high frequency alternating current electricity. It could also wirelessly transmit electricity, using the air as a conductor. Although the lightning produced is nothing like the ones produced naturally, but it is still able to kill. A small mistake could lead to a terrible casualty.

Nikola Tesla once had a theory that we can control the weather using extreme low frequency waves, or ELF waves, to alter and control the weather. The ELF waves would boom up to the Ionosphere, heating and expanding it, causing a cavity, making the stratosphere, the layer of gasses in our atmosphere right below the ionosphere, fill up the cavity left behind. The jet streams, water vapour travelling in the stratosphere in high speeds, would need to travel extra distances, weakening the jet streams, resulting in less water reaching to some places. Although he did not live to see it come true, weather altering machines do exist on this planet. June 1976, a new and powerful radio signal appeared worldwide out of nowhere. These radio signals trace to one spot, the outskirts of Mykolaiv in Ukraine. It is an experimental system, Duga-1, dubbed “The Russian Woodpecker” for its sharp tapping noise it gave out at 10hz resembled the pecking of a woodpecker. Coincidentally, or miraculously, on the very year, California experienced their worst drought ever recorded. Is this a deliberate act or just a mere coincidence? No one knows. The signals stopped appearing on 1989. But then, the Americans soon follow up with one of their own, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. HAARP was erected for the American military to test the effects of ELF waves on the weather.

When hurricane Katrina hit America, many suspected that its abnormal path, power and speed at which it gained power, were all caused by weather warfare. Katrina formed at Bahamas, during hurricane season, August 23, 2005 as a category 1. Then, it strengthened rapidly, and made a sharp turn into the Gulf of Mexico, towards New Orleans, Louisiana, where there was the most severe loss of life. Katrina was the most costly hurricane that struck America, and 6th from the top for overall strength of all recorded hurricane in the Atlantic. It was also the most costly natural disaster that ever hit America.

America was not hit by any other hurricanes after the tragic events of Katrina. This was thought to be the doing of ELF waves, pulsed to deflect oncoming hurricanes. There are 4 other such facilities in America, and another dozen in the other parts of the world. America has the power to alter weather at their will with its control of 5 such facilities.
Research, scientific experiments and breakthroughs would continue to fuel the progressing improvement on weather warfare. Manipulating weather might just be the new, revolutionary way to wage and win wars of the future.

Term 2: Under The Hood

The things taught in this term were totally unknown to me and perhaps that made this term very meaningful. I had not much prior knowledge of reflection and refraction of light. Although a huge portion of time this term was used up to finish off last term’s syllabus, I think that I still learned a lot.

I think of the tree branches of science, biology, chemistry and physics, I am most interested and fascinated by physics, and I think that light is an interesting topic to start with. The laws of reflection and refractions are applicable all around us, for example everything you see around you is actually because of light rays reflecting into your eyes. What really confused me was the drawing of ray diagrams, which we all never done before. I did not really know why rays are drawn the way they are and how to even start drawing the ray diagram at times. Then I tried trial and error with all the worksheets I had and drew whatever I thought was correct based on my knowledge, then check and clarify with the answer key to clear any of my misconceptions. I soon realized that it was not as hard as I thought it was. In fact there are only a few basic rules you have to follow. First, the normal is perpendicular to the surface. Second, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. Third, when a ray of light passes from an optically denser medium to an optically less dense medium, the light ray refracts away from the normal and vice versa. Forth, when incident ray is perpendicular to surface, there is no refraction. Lastly, the critical angle is the angle of the incidence ray from a denser medium to a less dense medium when the refracted ray is at 90 degrees from the normal or in other words on the surface, and if the angle of incidence is more than the critical angle, total internal refection occurs. It was very satisfying when I finally grasped the concept behind drawing ray diagrams.

In this term, I truly felt how lab lessons can aid me in my understanding of concepts. I did not actually know how converging lenses work until the practical lesson whereby we three beams of light to shine into a converging lens to see firsthand the effect it has on light. This made me understand better how a converging lens work, after being able to see how refraction occurs in the lens, and how moving the position of the lens affects the refraction of light. Another interesting lesson was when we had to observe the changes of the reflection of an object in front of a concave and convex mirror in relation to the object’s distance from the mirror. That lesson helped me in remembering how the image would be at different distances from the mirror, in relation to its focal point.

I think that I did badly in this term’s term test. I was so confident after the test that a high A1 was already in the bag, but in the end, well, it was not. In the end after looking through the paper I realized that the fact that I did memorize the content hard enough, coupled with poor time management were the combined culprit that cost me many marks. I did not memorize the chemical reactions between acids and ammonium salts, and also the charge of the ions (Sulfate or Sulfide). Apart from that I also did not memorize the PH levels and examples of weak acids, strong acids, weak alkalis and strong alkalis. Time management also cost me a lot as I was too obsessed with perfection in my ray diagram that I did not have enough time to do one or two questions at the back, which cost me a few marks too. I think there was definitely an improvement from the previous test in terms of carelessness, as I lost 1 instead of 5 marks because of carelessness. However that mistake was even more unforgivable as I went to memorize the number of electrons and the groups of the first 20 elements, and yet mixed up the valency and number of valence electrons of Nitrogen. This was definitely a horrible test for me and improvements can certainly be made. I hope this would be a wake up call for me to study harder for following science tests to get my A1 before I lose my chances of an exemption.



SUMMARY

REFLECTION AND REFRACTION

The normal is the line perpendicular to the surface. The angle of incident is the angle of the ray that hits the surface from the normal. The reflected ray is the ray that is produced when the light ray reflects off the surface. The angle of reflection, produced by the normal and the reflected ray, is always equal to the angle of incidence. When a ray of light passes from an optically denser medium to an optically less dense medium, refraction occurs, and the light ray refracts away from the normal and vice versa. When incident ray is perpendicular to surface in the same situation, there is no refraction. The critical angle is the angle of the incidence ray from a denser medium to a less dense medium when the refracted ray is 90 degrees from the normal, and if the angle of incidence is more than the critical angle, total internal refection occurs.

Arrival Of Water

Water, covering 70% of the earth’s surface, we think we know all about it, but we don’t. In fact, we know more about the moon and the surface to Mars than we do about what is covering about three quarters of our own planet. How did it all arrive?
Where did it come from? What role does it play in life? Where else in our solar system is water present?

The remnants of our solar system, failed planets or even the birth of life, asteroids and comets were thought to bring all earth’s water to earth, and even life itself. Comets are frozen chunks of matter, of ice and other matter, were the most logical answer to explain how water arrived. As we all know, the young earth was bombarded by extra terrestrial matter. Water could easily be transported into earth. But then, scientist made a shocking discovery after NASA’s “Stardust” mission. “Stardust” is a spacecraft designed to fly behind a comet, comet Wild 2, and collect samples of the comet material by flying behind its tail. The dust in the tail is collected by a comb of aerogel, a material that is very porous, containing 99.8% of air. It can capture any bits of comet dust that fly past it. The samples collected were sent to the labs. The water in collected is very different with the water here on earth. The samples collected contained a ratio of 1:1 of heavy water, water that is made up of deuterium and oxygen or 2H2O that resembles the physical and chemical behaviours of normal water, to normal water. However, water on earth contains a 2:1 ratio of heavy to normal water. Pure heavy water is 11% heavier than pure water. Comets might have brought some of earth’s water, but not all. Another mystery was : how did the water survive the impact of Thea? Thea, an infant planet that crashed into young earth, which caused the formation of the moon, making Earth completely molten again. This impact would have vaporized all water present on earth. Then, another scientific discovery explained the mystery. Rocks were found around the world that contains water trapped in their porous body. This explains how water was already present when the earth formed, and then comets brought more of it to earth. Then they survived the impact of Thea trapped inside the rocks, and from the water in the rocks, the oceans were formed after the crust solidified again.

Water and life is forever linked. Healthy humans can survive 2 weeks or 14 days without food, but only 2-3 days without water. Water helps us lose heat, expels our waste and enables digestion. It powers photosynthesis in plants, providing the important oxygen that we need in order to survive. It is such a common compound that it’s considered the universal solvent. It makes up 70% of our bodies. It is the basic compound to support life. Extremofiles, micro organisms that live in very harsh conditions, can survive without sunlight, but not water. Water is the source of life, and the thing that started it in the first place.

Water exists not only on earth, but other planets, moons and comets too. Water exists commonly in solid form. Water exist on Pluto, Charon (Moon of Pluto), Enceladus, Europa and Titan in solid forms. Both Europa and Titan are possible candidates to support extraterrestrial life. Europa, a moon of Saturn, Has an iron core like Earth’s and a frozen surface of ice and scientists suspect that under that layer of ice might contain liquid water, which supports life. It has geysers, spewing out ice particles that feeds Saturn’s E ring. Titan, another moon of Saturn, has a methane ocean, but also contains significant amounts of water ice. It has a “methane cycle” that is similar to the water cycles here on earth. There might be extraterrestrial life forms that use the methane for creating energy in some unknown way. Expeditions to the two moons are in consideration by NASA to answer the question of: Are We Alone?